Hey everybody. There has been a lot going on in our neck of the woods so we had to take a bit of a sabbatical. We will be back shortly with some new interviews and general tomfoolery. Enjoy the summer everybody!
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Category Archives: Blog
My Musical Disconnect-by Michael Marsicano
Michael Marsicano is an illustrator and frequent guest on our podcast. This is a post he wrote a few days ago about his current relationship with music. Check our his work at http://mmillo.com/.
There was a time in my life that was completely immersed in music. I listened to songs repeatedly – zeroing in on individual instruments. I relentlessly played guitar and jammed at open mics. Concerts were a common and deeply-appreciated event. Always on the hunt for new and fresh music – I feverishly collected tapes, albums, cds and dvds. But over the past decade this enthusiasm has considerably waned. Music in general, which once took up a sizable portion of my time and attention, has receded into a much smaller part of my soul. The filter that aggregates my personal soundtrack has become significantly tighter causing many universally-adored new artists to sound lack-luster to me. And while the rest of the world frolics through the pulsing garden of today’s newest musicians, I can be found apathetically reclining under the dense shade of my old standbys and their satellite contemporaries.
I’m well-aware that most people will identify this as an aging hipster longing for a time when music had a certain “purity” but I think that my musical apathy is more of a by-product of the passage of time.
As I steadily (yet gracefully, might I add) age, my life also grows more complex. Music, for most people is a kind of atmospheric mirror which we employ to evoke or heighten a moment. There is the album you put on when you go to the beach. There is a song you listen to when you are joyously wallowing in a breakup. There’s that one artist you only listen to during that first hint of autumn. When I was living in a simpler time, the music I was discovering amplified the euphoria of possibility. Each note seemed to be a metaphor for the rolling horizon of my life.
When I was twenty I personally discovered James Brown Live At The Apollo II – a double cd that fundamentally changed the trajectory of my musical tastes. And I was absolutely dumbfounded by the cool indifference it met from my father, a deep lover of black music. To me – this new album illuminated a part of me that had been lying dormant for twenty years. To my father – it was just an album that he heard twenty years earlier. Perhaps this is the very reason why it’s all the more difficult for new music to hook me so deeply today. Music was life because life was a party. And nowadays the party is followed by an early morning rise.
I suppose this is what maturity looks like. No longer fascinated by the amplification of Me, my ego has descended to a more manageable altitude and I have accepted the fact that everything new eventually becomes old. For years, music was mostly a proxy for “the good times”. I was never really a serious player so I don’t feel any sorrow at the fact that music resonates within my soul at a much lower frequency. Despite the forlorn nature of these statements, I’ve actually found my diminished obsession with music comforting. Instead, I’ve spent these past several years turning my undivided attention towards creating imagery and storytelling. And despite the consistent vacillating between self-consciousness and confidence that most working artists endure, the boost in output has been a personal and professional godsend.
Trading up one obsession for another – nowadays I spend most of my work time voraciously taking in podcasts. Whether it is ruminations on economic theory or a couple of comedians making dick jokes, I can’t get enough of the chatter. You would think that with my extensive trove of mp4’s I could easily find a soundtrack for whatever is on the drawing table.
Where are you today, WBUT???
Hey everybody. Hope you are all having a good week. So we were planning a pretty amazing podcast for this week. The subject was/will be DMT (Dimethyltryptamine). We were going to do a podcast discussing our thoughts leading up to our DMT experience, a little bit during, and then a discussion after with all of those involved. I thought it would be interesting and its something that some regular guests and myself have been looking to explore with. However, we tried to make it happen this past Saturday but the device we were using to get it into our bodies was ineffective. We will be rescheduling for a future podcast so stay tuned. We will be back next Tuesday with a podcast recorded at the 4th annual Bronx Pipe Smoking Society’s Small Game Dinner hosted by our good friend, Baron Ambrosia. The good Baron is a dear friend and after attending last year’s event, I am extraordinarily excited to talk to him and several of his attendee’s. In the meantime, hit this:
“Ice Cube’s a Pimp”
My friend and frequent WBUT contributor, Michael Marsicano, illustrated the Ice Cube poster in this CNN piece. They are trying to raise $25,000 to get the GoodYear blimp to read “Ice Cube’s a Pimp” 20 years after the release of his single “It Was a Good Day”. Mike is a bad ass and gets mentioned in the article. Check this out and donate if you can. Its for a hilarious cause.
How to Torpedo a Date That You Do Not Want to be on.
I’m a 34 year old single man. I’ve gone on a lot of dates. Some of them have been magical. Some of them tragic. There are times when you both have a great connection, times when you desperately want to have one, and then there are times when you could not hit the eject button fast enough! The following is a list of five ways to ensure that you will not be going out again with someone that you are not that into. However I should warn you that there will be some instances where this advice can backfire and have the complete opposite effect. If that happens you should:
A. Call a doctor.
B. Call a priest.
C. Make sweet love in the back of a taxi on your way to the airport to catch a plane to Las Vegas to get married.
If you are reading this and have been on a date with me and I have said one of the following five things to you, this is not about you. I used it another time on someone else. With you I was just being funny because I had a great time when we went out.
Here, in no particular order is my list of five with their appropriate titles. Use them wisely and you’re welcome.
Glitter- Tell them that one of your favorite guilty pleasure movies is Mariah Carey’s “Glitter”: I did this once. I told the story about how a bunch of friends and I went to see Glitter and got really stoned before we went in to the theater. At one point, one of them literally pissed himself with laughter. I also mentioned that there was a nice Hispanic family sitting behind us just trying to enjoy the movie. All of us were howling with laughter for the entire film which totally shit on the unfortunate family’s movie going experience. Listen, if you use this one you will come off looking like a retard and an asshole, but it works.
The Siffredi Out- Mention your encyclopedic knowledge of the films of Rocco Siffredi: Siffredi is a porn star who has been around for a long time. He is known for his catch phrase “Nasty Nasty”. He’s also a male porn star. What heterosexual man knows the names of male pornstars? So here is how to play it; Mention that you are a big fan of his work. To seal the deal, refer to him as an artist. To be super sleazy, say he is the Picasso of male porn performers. 95% of most women will want to throw their drink in your face. The remaining 5% will probably want you to deposit something else on their face. Unfortunately, “The Siffredi Out” will not work if you are a woman. This will almost definitely have the reverse effect. Sorry ladies. The fellas are pretty fucked up when it comes to their ding-a-ling.
The Doctor of Journalism- Take them on a date and when the drink orders are taken, order three margaritas and four beers…for just you: I got the idea from hearing about a dinner Hunter S. Thompson had with George McGovern, but its a good one so I had to use it. When I did this, the waitress thought I was a lunatic. She asked me if my drink order was for the both of us. I said that they were all for me and the lady could get whatever she likes. The waitress was then concerned that she couldnt legally put that many alcoholic beverages on one table with only two people sitting at it. I then pulled over another table and told her that she could place some there. Out of all the highlights of the bad dates I’ve been on, this was one of my proudest moments. My balls are not usually this big but the woman I went out with on this occasion had the disposition of a caribou. So if you decide to walk down this road, one of two things can happen. Your date will either be disgusted, leave and never speak to you again or join you on your quest to the land of the wasted and you will both get trashed and fuck in the bathroom. Ancient scholars call that a “win win” situation.
The Lawrence Taylor Maneuver- Tell them about the time you were on vacation and had to smoke crack when you ran out of coke: Sometimes, you really need to get out there to get out there, ya know. I’m very open about my drug experiences and the fact that I am a social drug user. There are few things that I have done that I regret or that I am ashamed of, but this was one of them. It only happened once and I knew that it was a really bad idea. The only positive note is that it gave me what I’d like to call the “King of the Outs”, also known as the “Lawrence Taylor Maneuver” or abbreviated as the “L.T.M.” This one is pretty much a guarantee that you will not be getting a call back. In fact, the look of amazement, shock and disgust you will be getting back from whoever you are telling this to is really quite photo worthy.
The Rhythm Section- Tell your date that you have named your testicles Tico Torres and Alec John Such: This will only work if they have a functional knowledge of the history of Bon Jovi. I got the idea when I heard a friend of mine tell his girlfriend that he recently named his penis Antonio Banderas after watching the film, El Mariachi. Classy.
Some additional quickies I have never used but seem hilarious (many thanks to Marlyn Munoz for the assist on some of these) :
You recently got off your psych meds and feel great, you are a big fan of conspiracy theories, keep referencing your upcoming court date and how the judicial system is bullshit, talk about why cold sores are a real pain in the ass, mention that even though you are in your thirties your parents are really cool with you having overnight guests, show hundreds of pictures of your pet(s), etc. I could go on, but I will not. Happy Holidays!
“Distraction and Why We Need it” by Jay Sustain
Most of us will never ask the question, what does it mean to be a human being? What obligations do we have? What expectations do others have?
You and I are human beings, born on the planet Earth. A fleeting design of our parents’ union. But we are also born citizens. Citizens of America, marks of this society. Though we are born with inalienable rights, our society has deemed those rights feeble, saying what can be given to us, and what can be taken away.
As we evolve into functioning citizens of this society, our individuality is threatened, and in some cases our humanity is completely lost. The weight of societal influence is almost too much to withstand, even the strongest parents will battle against the digital militancy of television and Internet influence. For the next 30 seconds, imagine the society’s that came before us, how they evolved without electricity or media influence. Now imagine what this society would be like if those things suddenly stopped. Chaos! Hundreds of millions of people would go completely insane if the thread of society began to unravel without a relatable news face to tell them why times are bad, millions will just refuse to accept it.
Entertainment has become a necessary factor of distraction, it keeps us satisfied with the decision to become dis-individualized citizens. Entertainment allows us to live vicariously through the characters who achieve lives that we can only dream about. It taunts us with possibility and fantasy, while also making us subservient citizens of society. When’s the last time you heard someone say, “Desperate Housewives” has really inspired me to be a better human being? In the days after 9/11, some New Yorkers took the streets and television, “the terrorists will win if we don’t quickly resume the world series”. The championship baseball game had of course been delayed by the attacks in NYC. Islam did not attack baseball, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t interested in disrupting the Yankees’ winning streak. The reason the games were delayed is because they became unnecessary in the immediate aftermath of such horror. There was no need to play a baseball game when all eyes were on the skies of Manhattan.
In March of 1933, the US government declared its financial inapt and filed for bankruptcy, since that time they’ve been borrowing money or taking loans with interest, from the Federal Reserve Bank, instituted in 1917. Of course the institution is not federal and it has no reserves. It’s actually not even a bank, it is a private company that pays taxes and bases it’s collateral on the amount of people that it can count on its watch, literally. This is done primarily through the US Census. As a citizen of America you are required to have a birth certificate, equating to little more than a note of ownership or citizenship.
Some readers may feel that that’s a brilliant idea, to keep our economy’s value, it’s got to be based on something. But there was an idea for this already, written into our constitution, it’s said no currency should be made lest it be back by bullion or hard currency. Now in the absence of value, the government is allowed to propose outrageous new adaptations, like a “shutdown” or a debt ceiling. These are all man-made ideas and problems, literally blatant distractions. There is no plan or desire to increase the nation’s value, only to maintain their unrealistic globalist agenda, harmful as its proven to be. We are all citizens in a man made society, one that has increasingly eliminated our “rights” and replaced them with bliss.
When you begin to see the hand behind the curtain, it’s easy to blame them for everything that is doomed, but it is you, the recipient that have brought these things about. Elitists are not at fault for preying on the weak are they? That is their plan. Are “they” at fault for filling the open mouths, or for placing a slave shilling in the open hand? This is a system of enslavement and we put the chains on willingly, because “doing it by yourself” is a foreign idea.
The point of my writing is to encourage each and every reader to create your own value, value your own creations. Propagate yourselves, your friends and family members. Create self-sufficiency and self-worth, renewable resources and an environment that will demonstrate your appreciation for humanity. Think of how the generations of you will live if they know nothing of themselves. Consider a life without meaningless entertainment, consider a life where you can think for yourself. What would you become good at?
Here’s a paragraph from Kymatica that I appreciate a lot… The true self is the epicenter of a persons entire being. It is the total sum of everything we are. However humanity has been endowed with the true freedom to choose to obey the true self, or to give into the temptation of vanity and materialism and false ego. Cancer begins when cells fail to communicate with the conscious signal of organism. The cancer upon our earth is the domination of false ego and the denial of nature. Our psychological schism has shut us off from communicating correctly with our inner self.
Acoustic Archives in Wired Magazine.
Hey everybody. A company I co-founded was featured in the October 2013 issue of Wired Magazine. Take a look at the article. Our Kickstarter campaign just launched too. If you or anyone you know could help us with funding, I will try my darndest to make all of your dreams come true. Give both a look below.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/sounds-of-silence/
A Hot, Sticky Mouthful of Truth by Ed Kurz
I wish Liberals would stop saying healthcare is a right. Healthcare is not a right. In fact there are no rights – no matter what the Constitution or anyone else says. There are only privileges that we all agree to work on collectively for us all to enjoy. “Rights” assumes there is a GOD granting these mystical gifts upon us in some sort of default position. That’s total horse shit. WE HUMAN BEINGS HERE ON EARTH are the only ones that can grant these things upon our selves as a society through hard work and cooperation. A “right” implies a given that can be taken for granted. A privilege implies something that must be maintained through sustained effort. The Bill of Rights is basically a shit wipe at this point in history. The Government has routinely destroyed access to virtually all the rights it’s supposed to uphold and we’ve let them through laziness apathy and ignorance. Look – Our healthcare system is still amazing and I got ridiculously complicated emergency reconstructive ankle surgery even when I had no insurance (I’m still paying for that surgery six years later) – but its incredibly inefficient. Not unlike a great many things here in America. Perhaps if we abandoned the idea that we all have certain rights by default magically from some daddy in the sky at no cost, we could better motivate ourselves toward maintaining and appreciating what actually goes into the expensive privileges we still enjoy here in the USA. The fact that everyone can get top notch treatment in an ER after a horrific accident doesn’t come at no cost. The uninsured are one reason our healthcare costs are so high per capita. This month really begins the great ACA experiment and although the websites are down due to heavy traffic and a government shutdown (not a coincidence) it will eventually get more people paying into the health care pool. The law is already leveling overall costs out but we will have to wait and see what happens once people start signing up for insurance. ACA is the law. These cynical teabagging nihilists won’t be able to stop it. This is simply their last desperate grab to thwart the will of the people and prevent millions of people from having access to more affordable health insurance through treasonous obstructionism. The law is the law. No more free rides. You buy health insurance and HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE! OR you can NOT buy it , pay an expensive tax penalty……..and still NOT have health insurance.
I wish Conservatives would stop expecting me to be “respectful” of them and their feelings, beliefs and opinions. Of course you are entitled to these. But opinions, feelings and beliefs are meaningless. All that matters or can be judged are people’s actions in the real world – not what you tell me is floating around inside your fucking skull. I’m tired of being nice or respectful to people that can’t even explain in any meaningful way how they justify to themselves what the GOP congress and governors are doing right now: The outright sabotage of people’s health insurance. ACA is the law. Get over it. If eventually you can get enough votes to actually repeal it and try something else that’s fine by me – but you have to follow the law. You don’t get to completely disrespect the democratic and legislative process and millions of federal workers and the citizens that rely on their work and not expect for people to push it back in your ignorant face. This entire shut down is disrespectful. And anyone who is defending it is disrespectful – unless they can actually explain to me how they justify it in real world terms – NOT NEBULOUS PRINCIPLES OR OPINIONS THAT DON’T EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD. I personally know dozens of people all over the country who have desperately been waiting for ACA to take effect, only to see some of their state governments completely sabotage the exchanges for purely ideological reasons – not practical reasons like; how can we get more people health insurance. I challenge any of you conservative motherfuckers to actually explain why getting more people paying for health insurance is a bad idea. Please explain how ACA will negatively affect your life enough that you can justify what amounts to a treasonous legislative COUP. And spare me your feelings you thin skinned sissies. If there is one HUGE lesson to take away from this shutdown nonsense it’s that conservatives don’t give two fucks about anyone else’s feelings but their own.
Accountability by Jay Sustain
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Accountability: “required or expected to justify actions or decisions, responsible.”
To whom must one be accountable? For what reason(s) should one be held accountable?
The United States’ Government likes to act as though they are holding other countries and world leaders accountable for their actions, yet they make no effort to be accountable for their own. In most cases, they will actually go out of their way to cover-up their mistakes, lie about their failures, and rewrite the standards to which they should be held.
Men are serving prison sentences; people are buried in caskets because someone refuses to be accountable. Look at the case of Pvt. Bradley Manning, a soldier sickened by what he saw his military doing in Iraq. Vowing to uphold his oath of accountability, he released a video that clearly implicated the US Army in war crimes, the least of which was multiple counts of murder. Instead of taking responsibility and taking action against the criminals, the Army turned their attention to Pvt. Manning. The Military held Pvt. Manning in inhumane conditions, mentally and physically tortured him and attempted to indict him on the most serious of espionage crimes. The court saw through the witch-hunt and refused to indict him on the bogus charges, he was only convicted on the charge of leaking classified materials and sentenced to 35 years in a military prison. In conjunction with the military, the major media has continued to demonize him and shifted their message to be about his desire to live as a woman. Because everyone knows there’s nothing worst than a homosexual. While the media sells us this modern day homophobic espionage novel, the War crimes go unpunished. Other crimes have destroyed the US’ reputation throughout the world and America continues forward with a new message, “accountability is not an option.”
In 2002, after corporate financial fraud had been found, the US Government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the purpose was to set forth new standards for ethical codes of conduct within organizations. The lawmakers felt that finally they could hold accountable the CEO’s and direct financiers of companies found to be guilty of financial fraud. The law also set forth viable protections for “whistleblowers” or employees who would expose fraud. Knowing that the law only applied to companies trading on the open market, allowing no oversight for private or smaller companies, large corporations simply changed their asset practices. In the case of Enron, they hid their assets and losses, had auditors shred documents to obstruct justice (Arthur Andersen), and as fate would have it, would go virtually unpunished when troves of evidence against them would be lost in the collapse of the Securities and Exchange Commission Office in World Trade Center 7 on Sept. 11th 2001. (yeah, read that again)
Must the federal Government force companies and CEO’s into ethical accountability? Did the “whistleblower law” protect the likes of Bradley Manning?
It must be understood that what is being talked about, is what you are being urged to think about. I could offer many examples about how the media refuses to be accountable, but the reality is they’re not designed to. Their responsibility is to the stockholders; their interests are dictated by the financiers. In some cases media representatives are directly connected to, or are members of the federal government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to congress in 2012 in which she put the weight of propaganda on the shoulders of the federal Government, “we are in an information war, and we are losing that war”… “the Russians have opened an English speaking network and ‘its very instructive'”, she also described Al Jazeera’s network as “effective” and “life-changing.” (ref: YouTube video of the same title.)
As our individuality is threatened, and the push to adhere to regulations, customs, and policies, accountability loses its draw. In a society where the Government is not accountable for their actions, and the media is not accountable to its viewers for what it reports, you must self educate, you must be the propagator of the knowledge that builds you.
The individual is the last chance for accountability. It is not the medias fault for lying to you, it is not a teacher’s fault for your kid being stupid, it is not the governments fault for committing crimes in your name…. It is yours. You are responsible for justifying the actions and decisions of your society. You are the creator of the world you live in. You are the individual that is hated by your enemy, not just your government. You are the willing participant of the 24 hour psycho babbling, murdering, trafficking, fraudulating, (did I say murdering?) culture. As a patriot it is your responsibility to say “not in my name”, it is up to you to turn the off the television and use your mind for knowledge and creativity. It is up to you to be the positive change that you want in the world.
Searching for Thomas Pynchon
A few years ago, I was introduced to the work of Thomas Pynchon. A girl I was secretly seeing at the time bought me a copy of his book The Crying of Lot 49. She mentioned that out of all of his books, this was probably the easiest for her to read. She said that the rest were extraordinarily detailed and complex and often required some type of “How to read this Book” accompaniment. Now at the time I was spending most waking, and some non waking, moments with this lady. She was extraordinarily intelligent and well read so for her to say that she struggled reading a piece of modern fiction was very intriguing to me. The moment that I went home I started to read it. I was instantly spellbound. The story was so deeply complex that I found myself reading pages and then going back and re-reading them again to make sure I captured everything. The plot line was fascinating. Secret societies, underlying tones of paranoia, LSD experimentation. The works. I immediately wanted to know more.
I soon started reading his magnum opus Gravity’s Rainbow. After about 25 pages I immediately saw what my then sort of ladyfriend was talking about. I had never read anything this complicated in my life. It was also my real introduction into encyclopedic postmodernism. The complex stories told within afterthoughts were enough to send your mind out of itself and back again. I needed to know more about the man that wrote this. I put on my investigator hat and got to work.
Throughout the next few months I did some research. Internet searching, periodicals, talking to other writers about his the folklore surrounding him. It was fascinating. I learned that he was originally from Nassau County on Long Island, as was I. I learned that he spent time in Mexico City around the same time as Lee Harvey Oswald was there. However the most interesting thing about him was his total avoidance of the media. Even when Gravity’s Rainbow won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1974, his publisher sent someone else to accept it. There were tales of him showing up at events dedicated to him incognito and leaving quickly (probably untrue). There was an incident after the publication of his 1997 novel, Mason Dixon, when he was followed by CNN reporters trying to do a story on the author and his anonymity. They recorded him walking down a block on the Upper West Side. He was so infuriated he called up a producer at CNN and talked them into not showing him directly. I read about the few times that other people from the media tried to find him and talk to him and how poorly it went. It wasnt until I saw a poorly made documentary about him that I realized how close I was to him, literally. At the time I was living on the Upper West Side. I had been around that neighborhood since I was 3 years old. My mom and step dad had lived there most of my life and when they left their apartment, I was living there for a few years. I noticed in the movie that one journalist who was trying to locate him was able to snap a picture of him at a subway stop 4 block from my house. That was when I really got cooking.
Out of respect for Thomas Pynchon and to avoid anyone else doing what I did, I am not going to tell you how I found his address, but I did. It took a few days and some quick thinking, but I did it…and he lived six blocks from me. How was I going to handle it? I have a tremendous amount of respect for Pynchon and I didnt want to be a creepy stalker. He made a decision to keep out of the public eye for a reason and I had a great amount of respect for why he made that choice. However, I’m an idiot and I just wanted to see him. I wasnt going to approach him and start talking about who he was. I just wanted to see him. This was increasingly difficult, however, because there were few to no photographs of him taken after his service in the Navy in the 1950’s.
The night I figured it out, I went for a walk. I walked down his block. I just wanted to see where he lived. There is definitely something about knowing a hero’s surroundings that makes the experience of enjoying there work that much better. Knowing that this is what they see everyday is interesting to me. That night I walked around his block 2 or 3 times. I was in a state of disbelief. I coulnt believe that I found him. This secretive wizard who goes through great lengths to hide his identity. I found him.
Over the course of the next few months, I would take night walks once per week always hoping to see him. Looking for a man in drab colors with buck teeth. Anytime I needed to go in the general direction of his apartment, I would always scoot down his block in the hopes that I could catch a glimpse of him. It never happened. I soon moved from the Upper West Side to Queens and that was over.
For those of you unfamiliar with Pynchon, get familiar. He has his finger on the pulse of something that is almost impossible to explain. He gets into your mind in a way that only great writers can. His newest novel, Bleeding Edge comes out in September. Its a love/hate letter to NYC around the turn of the millennium. And what was not to love or hate. This city has completely transformed itself in the last 30 years, turning its back on what made it great, but still keeping you wanting more. It is a city as complex as the author that writes about it. Both of which I have been spending a substantial amount of time trying to understand.
Below is a the piece that CNN did on Pynchon in the late 90’s where you actually see him for a moment.
What Brings us Together 