Ch-changes at Auticulture

People with their faces painted to look like the popular Mexican figure called "Catrina" take part in the annual Catrina Fest in Mexico CityNovember 11th, All Saints Day, or Dia de Los Innocentes, between Halloween and Day of the Dead.
Things are changing but it may be too soon to say what or how.
I am currently (with some help) upgrading the website, mostly invisibly, and I hope the upgrade will include a monthly newsletter which you can subscribe to in order to receive updates direct to your email address.
I have three books on their way: Dark Oasis (Unveiling John de Ruiter; or, Unveiling a Self-Made Messiah, undecided whether to go specific or general with the subtitle), due to be released later in the month. Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering, & the Psychology of Fragmentation, due out in April 2018. And The Vice of Kings: Occultism, Social Control, Abuse Culture, release date is not yet set but probably summer or autumn 2018.
My appeal to readers and listeners to buy copies of Seen and Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist seems to have been successful as the book has been in the top million amazon ranks since then (one day as high as 88,800). The goal is to sell all 1000 copies of the first print run after which there can be a second edition (with edited typos). I have taken down the free PDF as this seemed to only be giving people a reason not to buy the book rather than, as I’d hoped, inspiring them to do so. And while it is true that it’s more important to me that people read the book than that they buy it, it does seem as though the two are better off going hand in hand.
Meanwhile, The Liminalist: The Podcast Between is still going strong, currently alternating between the usual one-to-ones and selected highlights from the twice-monthly live video meet-ups. As an extension of the latter I have refurbished and relocated the Kubrickon forum, to here, as a space for Liminalista participants (and now non-participants) to thrash things out. If you are interested in attending a live video event, the next one is scheduled for November 12th, and you can sign up via the Neurodiversity Quiz here or email me, jasun at auticulture dot com. There’s a nominal fee for attending: a purchase of Seen and Not Seen. (The same applies if you would like to do a one-to-one for a podcast.)
Where is all this leading, besides to the world of the dead? I do not pretend to know but I hope more and more into the physical, actual, non-virtual realm of embodied human (and nonhuman) interactions. Congruent with these online developments we are also working on the commercial front of our house in order to have a space for meetings, though what will be the nature and purpose of these meetings also remains to be seen.
Recently my wife and I finished watching the remarkable AMC show Halt and Catch Fire. This is a show that really grew and deepened as it progressed (into its 4th and final season), and that came into its own as it reached its conclusion (something we might hope for ourselves). The last few episodes were so profoundly moving that both my wife and I were turned to mush. I said to her towards the end, “This show is really about how people need people.” In other words, about life.
What do people need people for? To discover who we are, what drives us, and what gives our lives meaning. To touch and be touched by what’s eternal within us, that which can only really be felt by being expressed, and which can only be expressed as a living response to one another (and to our greater environment).
For those of you who have been made curious by my relationship with Dave Oshana (but not curious enough to bite the bullet), Dave is giving a free online presentation on November 11 (which as it happens is John de Ruiter’s 58th birthday and the scheduled release date for Dark Oasis). You can read about it here.
I was just looking for the “Save Draft” function then I saw that I had written exactly 666 words. Those sixes continue to follow me around (note the url to the recent “Alien Artifact” video). I don’t pretend to know why or what it means, but as I wrote in Vice of Kings, there is no revelation without the beast. Speaking of the beast, last night was Halloween and we kept Tuco, our black cat, inside, because we heard stories on Faceborg about how cats (especially black ones) go missing on Halloween and that many rescue homes don’t allow animal adoptions in the days leading up to Halloween. Tuco didn’t take to being kept inside however and woke us up sometime after midnight. In the end we had to let him out, and it took me several hours to get back to sleep. I had unpleasant dreams about my grandfather Alec and Jonathan Lethem (Alec didn’t like him and said he was visibly Jewish!).
In the morning, Tuco was sleeping by the window, unhurt.
Oh, one other bit of local news:  a known member of one of the power-families in my town just got sentenced to two months parole for “verbal assault,” hurling racial slurs at a Pakistani man in a parking lot including “White power!” Make of it what you will.
(888 words)
 
 
 

7 thoughts on “Ch-changes at Auticulture”

  1. Jasun, I’d be interested to know what you make of the Hope man and his sentencing for expressing racial disgust at the South Asian lawyer. What do you mean by his being a member of a power family? Is his family prominent politically?

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  2. What I make of the incident is that he resented the lawyer making a record of his alleged threats to the 72 year old parking attendant who was ticketing him for double parking.and once he lapsed into racial epithets he couldn’t stop himself, especially since the salient feature of the person recording him was his race. Still, one could conclude he at least has a latent disposition to racism and sympathy with neo-fascism. The video record goes viral and the officials step in to deal with an embarrassing situation that might be bad economically for the small community, and also to follow trends that are in the nature of preemptive attacks on free speech and eventually free thought. The judge’s sentence could be viewed as harsh, but the article points out the man’s previous history of violating a prohibition to drive a vehicle for a year and his 45-day jail time for owning a weapon with intent to use it dangerously (hard to make sense of that). I’m wondering if the judge was influenced by the man’s prior infractions; if so, wouldn’t his judgment be challenged for bias or even double-jeopardy?–I display my ignorance of legal matters.
    The South Asian man himself thought the judge’s sentence harsh and suggested that the “perp” might have been more helped by being referred to a counselor. I conclude that my view of the matter isn’t clear!
    A larger question was broached by one of your podcast guests, Mr. Kerrigan, who wrote a book on bureaucratic insanity. The publisher of Mr. Kerrigan’s book is Dmitri Orlov whom I nominate as a possible future podcast guest. I forgot to mention when we did a podcast that he’s yet another blogger that I follow even behind his current Patreon Wall, only $1 a month.

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