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Sunday, March 22, 2015
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Blind taste test: world's most primitive record player
YouTube is choked with DIY methods of playing records non-electrically. If you had an old Victrola, the problem would be solved for you. But people figure things out in the damnedest ways.
I have one of those impossibly vague, grainy memories of seeing something on TV - it had to be something like the Goon Show or Beyond the Fringe, surely one of those zany British things, but definitely not Monty Python. Something else. Anyway, the sketch depicted a huge record sitting on the ground, and a maniacal person with a big stylus running in circles all around it. Thus playing it.
But I digress.
I was all set to think this was the simplest and most innovative way to play a record manually, when I came across THIS:
For the love of lovely Christ - this is even simpler, if you're to believe it. I saw another video similar to this one which had an old stylus taped inside a cone of paper, but fuck that, this is so much easier! If it's a fake, well then it's at least an elegant one. And good night.
OK, it's the next day, and I'm not satisfied with those couple of videos. Here is something I have imagined only in my dreams - a record that you can actually eat. As with most impossible things, on YouTube it turns out to be possible, if highly improbable. And as usual, there are at least two people to have created the "first", but both look viable to me, unless the whole thing is faked. Send me a couple, and I'll do a taste test.
I can see Bentley doing this - but no. He'd take a flying four-footed leap straight up in the air and land on the record, this creating musical havoc.
POST-BLOG GLOB. So this got me thinking about the old record players of my youth. For the most part we weren't allowed to use the deluxe model, the Seabreeze, which was a large wooden cabinet with a record player inside it. I kept using it well into the '70s. No, these were cheapie things that often incorporated a carry-case, so you could do up the fastenings and tote it around with you. These things had cords, as I remember, so toting might be a problem.
A lot of them were branded: Woody Woodpecker or Howdy Doody or Mickey Mouse or some-other-type. Things sounded best on Howdy Doody.
But there was a whole generation which must have been older than my late-'50s models. They're hideous enough to be completely fascinating to me. I just don't "get" the construction of these. They look like sewing machines, or else curling stones (coffee grinders? Primitive space crafts?). I don't see speakers anywhere. Tinnyness was a prerequisite of these things, and since they were made of tin, boy would they be tinny.
I tried to make a photoshop collage of these tiny little eBay-sourced pictures, but gave up because it hit new lows of ugliness. Many of these are in the same strange form. so there must have been a lot of them around. The tone arm would weigh approximately one thousand pounds, so a well-played record would be worn out in about a week.
I don't see why it is that I imagine water dripping from these. They have a sort of pumplike quality - or no, is that a flatiron? You could iron your clothes with the top one. The second one down seems well ahead of its time, in that it looks to be playing a chocolate record.
This is a tin model of the Titanic. The black pancake on top of it is a mystery. I wonder why turntables needed to be 1 1/2 inches thick.
Did it need to be so ugly?
This is a carefully-arranged portrait from a vintage site. Pretty gorgeous, I'd say, but it still looks like some sort of drainage system. Or the Starship Enterprise.
All right, here it is, my collage, and it's ugly - but the whole genre.is ugly to begin with.
"You had me at hello"
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
Fakebook: when you can no longer fake it
Actual Facebook post from this morning. Name withheld for my sake, not theirs.
Well this is just dandy! I went to sleep yesterday with 2,012 likes on my author page and now I wake up to find I only have 1,960, on the reason that the likes from inactive accounts have been deleted. This is so unfair! If someone liked my author page, that means they liked me and/or my writing. If they died, changed their names or have simply deleted their accounts, that doesn't mean they've stopped liking me or my books. I've contacted Facebook about it and am anxious for a reply. I don't know if any of you have had this unpleasant surprise, but I strongly encourage you to protest against this policy. It's rude and unfair for everyone.
Well. Let me tell you right now, I am so inundated with thousands of "likes" that I didn't even NOTICE a couple of them had been dropped from my author page for some crass reason that is beyond my control (such as dying: what a feeble excuse for no longer liking my work!). As a matter of fact, today's posts on Facebook all seem to be along these lines. They're either hot-air-style self-promotion or humble "admissions" of receiving a major literary award (which they don't deserve, of course, but here's the name of the book anyway). People told me FB would be a great way to promote my book, but so far it's pretty much of a bust.
I'm at the point of surrender. Not willingly, not gladly, though there is a certain amount of relief involved. Trying to make a go of being published, even trying to break even and not end up (humiliatingly) in the hole is, for reasons that forever elude me, beyond my grasp.
I got to the party late, you see. Everyone already knows each other, so when a blank space walks into the room, no one sees it. Or so it has always seemed.
I have no regret whatsoever about writing the novel. It was exhilarating, and proved I COULD write again, book-length, after what amounted to wholesale spiritual and physical collapse. Then there was the thrill of getting it published, which I honestly thought would never happen. But oh the frustrations. A new FB friend recently asked me if the Lloyd family liked my book. LIKED my book? I don't know how many copies I sent them, and the silence was deafening. Such people receive stacks of books from would-be would be's, and they never get to them. I'm not saying they're not busy. They are. But the total lack of acknowledgement, the sense that another $20 or $30 (depending on postage) has been thrown into the Grand Canyon is beyond disheartening. This is a published-copy form of the infamous slush pile, a phenomenon which never goes away and which makes writers want to open a vein.
There have been heartbreaking moments of hope, as when Rich Correll phoned me from Los Angeles out of the blue, to tell me he loved my samples and wanted to see more. But suddenly, for no reason I can fathom, he stopped answering my phone calls and emails, and would not even tell me if he received his copy. I was left hanging, which to me is far worse than being told to go take a flying leap at the moon. The only answer I received from the 25 or 30 I sent out (some to absurd places I'm too embarrassed to mention) was from Stephen Fry - his assistant, who thanked me and assured me he'd never get around to reading it. But it was acknowledgement. I exist. Whoopee!
So if you can't stand this particular form of heat, just get out of the kitchen. But it does make me wonder what awful deficiency in me (for others DO succeed, like the Likes Lady above) leads to this sort of failure over and over and over again, when I am so often told by readers how much they enjoy my work.
But I've never made it to 2,012 likes. Maybe that's the problem. I don't often get more than 12 likes. People just don't like me.
But maybe it's because they're dead.
(p. s. This is a vastly rewritten version of a post that was so angry and bitter and devastated, I finally decided - even though nobody is going to read it anyway - that I just can't put out that kind of energy.)
I'm at the point of surrender. Not willingly, not gladly, though there is a certain amount of relief involved. Trying to make a go of being published, even trying to break even and not end up (humiliatingly) in the hole is, for reasons that forever elude me, beyond my grasp.
I got to the party late, you see. Everyone already knows each other, so when a blank space walks into the room, no one sees it. Or so it has always seemed.
I have no regret whatsoever about writing the novel. It was exhilarating, and proved I COULD write again, book-length, after what amounted to wholesale spiritual and physical collapse. Then there was the thrill of getting it published, which I honestly thought would never happen. But oh the frustrations. A new FB friend recently asked me if the Lloyd family liked my book. LIKED my book? I don't know how many copies I sent them, and the silence was deafening. Such people receive stacks of books from would-be would be's, and they never get to them. I'm not saying they're not busy. They are. But the total lack of acknowledgement, the sense that another $20 or $30 (depending on postage) has been thrown into the Grand Canyon is beyond disheartening. This is a published-copy form of the infamous slush pile, a phenomenon which never goes away and which makes writers want to open a vein.
There have been heartbreaking moments of hope, as when Rich Correll phoned me from Los Angeles out of the blue, to tell me he loved my samples and wanted to see more. But suddenly, for no reason I can fathom, he stopped answering my phone calls and emails, and would not even tell me if he received his copy. I was left hanging, which to me is far worse than being told to go take a flying leap at the moon. The only answer I received from the 25 or 30 I sent out (some to absurd places I'm too embarrassed to mention) was from Stephen Fry - his assistant, who thanked me and assured me he'd never get around to reading it. But it was acknowledgement. I exist. Whoopee!
So if you can't stand this particular form of heat, just get out of the kitchen. But it does make me wonder what awful deficiency in me (for others DO succeed, like the Likes Lady above) leads to this sort of failure over and over and over again, when I am so often told by readers how much they enjoy my work.
But I've never made it to 2,012 likes. Maybe that's the problem. I don't often get more than 12 likes. People just don't like me.
But maybe it's because they're dead.
(p. s. This is a vastly rewritten version of a post that was so angry and bitter and devastated, I finally decided - even though nobody is going to read it anyway - that I just can't put out that kind of energy.)
"You had me at hello"
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
Friday, March 20, 2015
Suicide Auction: bidding on the bunks
Suicide Cult's Possessions Auctioned Off
New York Times Published: November 22, 1999
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 20— Many of the items on the block were ordinary enough -- a plastic laundry hamper, card tables, camping gear, clothes, tools, cookbooks, a sewing machine. Only a few -- a voluminous collection of books about U.F.O.'s, 20 metal-frame bunk beds, a pair of black Nike sneakers -- offered a hint of their macabre origins.
The items auctioned by county officials today were the last earthly possessions of the 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult who killed themselves nearly three years ago, in hopes of boarding a spaceship that they believed was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. The mass suicide was one of the worst in United States history.
The belongings on sale today offered no insight into what led their former owners to a point in life where they believed the path to the heavens began with a lethal mix of barbiturates, vodka and apple sauce. There were 183 lots in all, which also included television sets, videocassette recorders, a camcorder and three cars.
About 375 people came to bid on the items with a mix of gallows humor, indifference and ignorance. Their reasons for bidding included basic need, morbid curiosity and commercial intent.
''I've got to go; this is not for me,'' said David Sauceda, a 40-year-old construction worker who was looking for tools when he was told the source of the items.
The curators of the Museum of Death, which is expected to open in Hollywood in January, bought a bunk-bed frame to be used in a display about cult deaths.
Ken Powell, 34, and his wife, Laura, 29, bought seven bunk beds that they said they intended to sell for a profit on the Internet.
''They might go for a couple grand each,'' Mr. Powell said. ''You don't know. There are some weird people out there.''
The bodies of the cult members were discovered on March 26, 1997, in a seven-bedroom house in an affluent suburb, after the cult's leader, Marshall Herff Applewhite, had sent several people a videotape in which he said the members would be ''shedding their containers'' and ''leaving this planet.'' A videotape of the scene made by investigators from the Sheriff's Department showed the cult members uniformly dressed in black track suits and black Nike sneakers, covered with purple shrouds.
The auction was delayed by a probate battle involving two former members of the group, Mark and Sarah King, who wanted control of the estate. Though they ultimately lost, the county agreed to sell them the ''intellectual property'' in the estate -- manuscripts, artwork, computers and the like, as well as patches bearing the cult's logo -- for $2,000. Kent W. Schirmer, the chief of San Diego County's property division, said the Kings wanted to keep the materials out of the public realm.
Proceeds from the auction will be given to families of the dead to cover the cost of burial. Mr. Schirmer said that the crowd was not much larger than it is for most such auctions and that the bidding amounts were average. By the end of the day the items had fetched nearly $33,000.
Bidding was heaviest on the books and on the bunk-bed frames, which generally sold for $110 to $130.
Few in the crowd of bidders shared the cult's beliefs or acknowledged a fascination with death. A man and woman dressed completely in black and gray determinedly bid several hundred dollars for most, if not all, of the books in the estate, but would not speak with reporters afterward.
Julie Stangeland, a collectibles trader who holds a certificate in mortuary science, said she bought one of the bed frames because she was fascinated by cults and the power their leaders exert over members. But she added: ''I don't want to sound morbid because I'm really not. If God would alter the universe so people could live forever, I'd be kicking my heels up.''
Edward C. Songer, 66, a federal telecommunications worker, said he bid on boxes of crimping tools, wires and phone cards because he was able to pay $60 for items that would normally cost about $200.
''It's just for my occupation; it's for my life,'' Mr. Songer said. ''It doesn't bother me where they came from.''
Some voiced discomfort with the origin of the items.
Mike Benavides, 25, said he wanted to buy a VCR, because his had broken down, and maybe another piece of memorabilia as well. But his wife, Jennifer, 21, said she was unsure whether she would allow something like that in the house.
Most people said they bid in the hopes of owning a novel, if grim, piece of Americana.
''It's an odd piece of San Diego history, but it happened here nonetheless,'' said Andrew Shaw, a 27-year-old college student who also bought a bed frame. He said he would put it in his guest bedroom.
But would he sleep on it? ''Absolutely not,'' he said.
Photos: Bunk-bed frames were among the items once belonging to members of the Heaven's Gate cult that were auctioned off in San Diego on Saturday. Their house was the site of a mass suicide in 1997. Also on the block: books about U.F.O.'s and a pair of black Nike sneakers similar to those worn by the 39 people whose bodies were found in the cult's house.
"You had me at hello"
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
Don't eat that apple!: The Heaven's Gate Cybercult
The Lord only knows what gets me on to these bizarre topics. Maybe it's too much late-night YouTube cruising, or staring into the amber depths of Bentley's hypnotic feline eyes. But something led me back to Marshall Applewhite and one of the most bizarre cults in human history, with the innocuous name Heaven's Gate.
What interests me now - hell, EVERYTHING about this interests me now - is that I'm finding material still on the net which has been unaltered since 1997, when the whole mess unravelled in a blur of purple shrouds, poisoned applesauce and identical Nikes which had never touched the ground. Nothing has been updated or upgraded or changed in any way, not even the Heaven's Gate official web site which still looks like an artifact frozen in the '90s.
Back in 1999 there was a mass auction of the grave goods from Heaven's Gate, with people eagerly buying up the bunk beds, plastic lawn chairs and identical black polyester track pants (which, alone, would make any sane person want to commit suicide). They've become the new collectables and are no doubt selling briskly on Craigslist. But what exactly does this tell us? All the horror has gone out of it, somehow. 39 suicides doesn't even stack up against Jonestown, does it? They were just a bunch of whack jobs, should've known better. Even if they had parents who loved them and were horribly traumatized, a lot of them would be dead by now, or would've moved on.
When the whole thing was fresh, and I remember the scalp-prickling feeling when I first read about it, nobody was interested in buying up macabre artifacts. The entire world was groping for answers as to how such a thing could be. Since the cult was involved with designing the kind of crude web sites that were a complete mystery to me back then, cyberculture began to develop a creepy, culty dimension. The article below, following quickly on the heels of the tragedy, expresses the kind of uneasiness, even paranoia about The Internet which did not dissipate until the last couple of years, when our brains turned to styrofoam peanuts and we all learned to love Big Brother. Lurking in the net were places for potential cultists to cluster in virtual seclusion. It was as if no one had even thought of this before, and the possibilities were horrific.
So even though grotesque offshoots of technological progress (universal surveillance, addiction to savage video games, rape culture driven by pop culture, general dehumanization, and supermorbid obesity) are exponentially worse than they were in the innocent mid-'90s, we've lost that paranoia now, because, well, hell, ain't it a lot more fun to just sit around watching Netflix and eating ourselves up to 400 pounds? We only heard about the lunatic Applewhite and his Nazilike insistence on absolute uniformity (including sacrificing your testicles because, hell, who needs balls anyway?) because they all decided one day (or maybe he did) that this would be a good day to die. How many other Heaven's Gates are there out there, how many UFO cults, polygamous houses of horror, and catastrophes balanced and teetering on the verge?
It's a curious thing that videos and articles from the '90s seem to have been produced hundreds of years ago. The mindset is so different. Everyone tiptoes around technology, waiting for it to blow. It has blown, as far as I am concerned - or it just blows, more likely - and our concern about its more lethal effects is being dulled and muted and muffled because WE ARE ALL being consumed by it, and either don't know, or don't want to. We're frogs in hot water, too placid to notice we are just about ready to pop.
The Internet as a god and propaganda tool for cults
From San Francisco Bureau Chief Greg Lefevre
SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- Internet writer Erik Davis says the Internet by its nature seems infinite and ethereal, almost a deity in itself.
"In many ways we're sort of creating a 'deus ex machina,' a great machine that is penetrating and connecting in with more and more of our lives. In that sense there's something like a terrestrial god about it," he said.
But he and other experts fear that this infinite and ethereal place has become the new location of choice for cult recruiters. Its god-like appearance is deceptive, and can be dangerous, especially in the hands of often-naive Web users.
That's exactly why psychology professor Margaret Singer says surfers should be on guard against cult recruiters on the Web. "They've been tricked and deceived and they're too trusting," she said.
Writer Davis also warns of the dangers facing so called "Techno-Pagans," those who ascribe too much power to what they find on the Internet. "It's -- in a certain sense -- the ultimate technology," he said. "At the same time it resurrects sort of an older feeling about liberation from the body, about moving into a kind of virtual fantasy land."
Bright users, cheap medium
Experts tell CNN Interactive the Internet is economical for cults. Internet e-mail is cheap, and it keeps cult members hooked, wherever they are, with messages of support and propaganda. And computer cults may not have to rent land or buildings.
The Internet becomes their virtual commune.
People who spend a lot of time on computers may be more at risk, suggests Davis, who writes articles on techno-cults for Wired Magazine.
"Working around computers more and more, and identifying more and more of your life with what's happening on the other side of the screen, has a very a very disassociative effect. One can lose touch with maybe the immediate physical reality, or the social, larger culture outside of you," he said.
"You can imagine very well people who already have a cult-like bond, using the Internet and their relationship to computers to even further pull themselves away from what the rest of us consider the real world."
Singer, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley says cult joiners often have little or no "street smarts." "College-age and young working types spend hours in front of their computers and the only friendships they have are other people on the computer. And they're open to being too trusting and thinking what they read is true."
Web encourages 'niche cultures'
"You can use search engines to find other people who are interested in the same thing that you are. You can find phrases on Web pages that are associated with your interests and then use the mailing addresses on those pages to get in touch with the people behind them."
Davis says the power of the Net is seductive. "They can very easily create a fantasy world, or fantasy story about who they are, what their purpose is on Earth, and what the purpose is, of computers."
New techniques, same results
Silberman says many cults look for computer savvy devotees, because they can build a cottage industry around the cult and allow it to become self-sufficient. For example, the Rancho Santa Fe group earned income by designing Web pages for other companies.
"They can make a lot of money, they can give a lot of it to whatever group they are in and they don't have to live by the rules of standard society," he said.
Singer agreed. "What the cults want to recruit are average, normal, bright people and especially, in recent years, people with technical skills, like computer skills. And often, they haven't become street smart. And they're too gullible."
The techniques may be new but the results are often the same. Cult members lose their freedom, often their money.
And sometimes, their lives.
Correspondent Don Knapp contributed to this report.
- Mass suicide involved sedatives, vodka and careful planning- March 27, 1997
POST-BLOG PANIC REPORT: Below is a cut-and-pasted version of the original Heaven's Gate web site, unchanged since 1997. All the links on it work. They take you to the kind of solid margin-to-margin blocks of text that were popular in the mid-'90s. It is, of course, gibberish. But what made the Twilight Zone theme begin to pulsate in my head happened when I clicked on their email address, AND IT CAME UP. You can email the Heaven's Gate cult. No, really! And maybe you'll even get an answer, from somewhere on the other side of Hale-Bopp.
(Admission. I'm frightened. I really am, I'm too scared to try.)
HALE-BOPP Brings Closure to:
| Whether Hale-Bopp has a "companion" or not is irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us at "Heaven's Gate." The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the "Kingdom of Heaven") has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach is the "marker" we've been waiting for -- the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to "Their World" -- in the literal Heavens. Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion -- "graduation" from the Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily prepared to leave "this world" and go with Ti's crew. If you study the material on this website you will hopefully understand our joy and what our purpose here on Earth has been. You may even find your "boarding pass" to leave with us during this brief "window." We are so very thankful that we have been recipients of this opportunity to prepare for membership in Their Kingdom, and to experience Their boundless Caring and Nurturing. |
Keys or Bookmarks to Vital Information
on Our Website
 | Do's Intro: Our Purpose -- The Simple Bottom Line (an excerpt from our book HEAVEN'S GATE -- see below) |
 | Statement by an E.T. Presently Incarnate (excerpt from our book) |
 | Overview of Present Mission (excerpt from our book, a student paper) |
 | Last Chance To Advance Beyond Human (excerpt from our book) |
 | To Access Our Book Online in its Entirety: How and When HEAVEN'S GATE May Be Entered |
 | Transcripts of Two Recent Videos |
 | Our Position Against Suicide |
 | How a Member of the Kingdom of Heaven Might Appear |
 | Earth Exit Statements by Students |
| Exit Press Release: "Away Team" Returns to Level Above Human |
To Order a Hard Copy of Our Book
One of our correspondents from Germany offered to translate the following two transcripts into German.
- Videotape 1: Last Chance To Evacuate Earth Before It's Recycled
(Sept. 29, 1996 - 70 min.) - Transcript of videotape 1. ...... German translation
- Videotape 2: Planet Earth About To Be Recycled -- Your Only Chance To Survive -- Leave With Us (Oct. 5, 1996 - 58 min.)
- Transcript of videotape 2. ...... German translation
- Our Book, entitled How and When "Heaven's Gate" May Be Entered
(An Anthology of Our Materials).
If you would like to send for videotapes, there is no charge. If you would like to copy them and return the originals to us, we will make them available to someone else. If you choose to assist with deferring our expenses, those funds would be reinvested towards getting this information out.The transcripts of videotapes 1 and 2 can be viewed online, downloaded or requested through TELAH Services.
Hard copy editions of the book may be ordered through TELAH Services for $45 US. This includes shipping and handling, via priority mail.
Requests For Materials Can Be Emailed To: rep@heavensgate.com
Or Sent Via Postal Service To:
4757 E. Greenway Rd. Ste. 103-178
Phoenix, AZ 85032
| To Access Our Online Book How and When HEAVEN'S GATE May Be Entered |
| Do's Intro: Purpose - Belief | Statement by an E.T. Presently Incarnate |
| Last Chance To Evacuate Earth | Planet About To Be Recycled |
| Overview of Present Mission | Last Chance To Advance Beyond Human |
| Our Position Against Suicide | How a Member of the Kingdom of Heaven Might Appear |
| Connecting Links | Privacy Concerns |
| Back to Bookmarks | Top of this Homepage |
"You had me at hello"
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
| Do's Intro: Purpose - Belief | Statement by an E.T. Presently Incarnate |
| Last Chance To Evacuate Earth | Planet About To Be Recycled |
| Overview of Present Mission | Last Chance To Advance Beyond Human |
| Our Position Against Suicide | How a Member of the Kingdom of Heaven Might Appear |
| Connecting Links | Privacy Concerns |
| Back to Bookmarks | Top of this Homepage |
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