Something to make fun of this 6/6/2006

2006-06-06T21:23:48Z

I've got a few joke-like images for everyone's consideration, the first put together with care, the other thrown together in a few hours.

The good, well-thought out one (done in the GIMP):

"W-pentagram-?"

+++++

The bad one, done in Paint, today:

"a six, on a d6, with hexagram pips"

For those of you who are interested...

2005-04-22T12:44:58Z

there's a couple of Pagan things happening in the near future (ok so there's a lot of them, but these are the closest ones):
HACK on Thurs. May 5th (Hack is a bunch of pagans who get together to drink coffee), then Sat. PNO on May 7th (Pagans Night Out varies), and PMS on Fri. May 13th (Pagan Monthly Social is a chinese dinner basically).

spook_online @ 2004-12-14T17:23:00

2004-12-14T22:24:09Z

it's so quiet, i thought i should post a message seeing how long it's been since the last one.

OMG!

2004-10-31T18:01:35Z

I didn't know this existed!!!!

HOLY EINSTEIN ROSEN PODOLSKY PARADOX!!!! :-D

spook_online @ 2004-09-25T17:38:00

2004-09-25T15:20:53Z

Hi everyone. I really wasn't part of SPOOK because I left UH before it really got going... but can I still join your online group? :) I promise I'm quite SPOOKy, and Jason can attest to that.

I'm a gnostic agnostic whose prognosis is for diagnoses.

I need some help

2004-08-22T06:11:49Z

Guys, I have a ghost. I haven't determined his name, but he is at least aware that he's dead. He's currently residing in Taub 309. He doesn't do too much, but he has been known to turn on the cold water tap every now and then, as well as making it really cold in here.

Basically, I'm asking for some help from the cleaning crew, as I don't have the ability to take care of this by myself. You'd think I could, but not in this particular case.

Submitted for your approval

2004-06-20T19:30:00Z

The Aesthetics of The Republic of SPOOK
(For The Republic of SPOOK, on censorship of the arts)

[To be included in the Book of Ye Olde Blasphemy and posted on spook_online]

Now, given our Republic’s stance with a class of artisans who live off of the patronage of the wealthy in the state, as opposed to producing for the marketplace, it would seem that there would be a complete lack of kitsch, and all things presented as art would present a meaningful cultural or psychological message, which we should not strive to control. However, the fact remains that simple-minded people could get into the artisan class and populate the art world of the Republic with meaningless and overly comfortable art.

However, noting the arrival of kitsch during an era of high artistic literacy (the Academic Art period, which was especially concentrated in the United Kingdom and the United States, but not restricted to these countries), artistic education among the business class will not be enough to keep worthless works out of the land.

The danger of kitsch comes from its nature to provide an excessive amount of beauty and comfort, to the point of denying any problems in the culture and its government and philosophy. Instead, it simply evokes a quick, cheap feeling of happiness. In addition, much kitsch is produced simply to be beautiful. While beautiful things are generally nice, they are not always good or healthy. Take, for example the poisonous frogs of the Amazon. These are strikingly beautiful frogs, yet they secrete toxins through their skin, which the natives of that area use on their darts to kill prey. Consuming kitsch would be much like eating one of these frogs alive, but on an intellectual and psychological level. In nature, the most beautiful animals are toxic. The same generally holds for art.

In contrast of presenting art as strictly beautiful or pleasing, the aesthetic must be defined as what does the most good in the culture. Therefore, it is the artisan’s role in our Republic to find the unhappiness and expose it to the public, so that the Enforcers can resolve it. As such, it is the artisans who must be the just people in the Republic. This should cause real artists to be held in high esteem, instead of being scoffed at by the general public as lazy, overeducated people. Therefore, the artisans should include the philosophers (who were previously grouped with the Guardian class), and should be in constant communion with the Guardian class instead of members of said class.

Now, it might be a good idea to go into the specifics of what kinds of art fall under kitsch and that which is legitimate art. For this, the discussion shall center on the art of song, which is popular among college students such as ourselves due to the fact that it can be absorbed while doing other things, such as typing up term papers. Furthermore, it is temporal in nature, as songs have a beginning and end. The other thing about songs is that they are both in the realm of performance and literary art, allowing for two modes of communication of the idea. Preferably, these ideas are in alignment, but this is not necessarily the case.

As current songs go, the presence of kitsch is most prevalent due to market forces being a primary influence in the art form. As such, songs are designed most often to sell, not to communicate ideas—at least this is the case in most genres. The genre of contemporary Christian music is probably the most infected with the kitsch virus, as its consumers do not want to be confronted with issues in their religion, for whatever reason. There are several Bible stories that don’t make any sense, given the general tone of the Bible, such as the story of Abraham and Isaac (as explored quite elegantly by Soren Kierkagard in Fear and Trembling). Instead of trying to resolve these issues to their listeners, these performers simply says “Jesus loves you” and do no more. Occasionally, they try to pawn themselves off as musical missionaries, but yet their music is marked strictly to those inside their own faith, which is hardly prostlytazation. Basically, they provide a religious comfort, and not much more. Such songs are terrible blasphemies against art and religion.

Another genre that, while not as kitschy as Contemporary Christian, does exist mainly on shaky legitimacy is country music. While there are some legitimate works of art in this genre, most performers give the country listening public a piece that either denies the existence of evil or glorifies such evil to the extent of making us far too comfortable with actions carried out allegedly in our name. For example, I have personally found it hard to defend the music of Toby Keith as legitimate art, as it simply glosses over the realities of war (to be fair, a lot of the big band music from World War II did the same thing). The wholesale support of unjustified military action, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq (and subsequent occupation by the United States military) without even addressing the moral issues is irresponsible at best, and kitsch by any definition. Of course, his fans would call me a French sympathizer (though I don’t know why we’re attacking the French when we’re at war with Iraq—last I checked, it was the British that were in charge of the League of Nations Mandate that became Iraq) or a Dixie Chicks fan (I will admit to owning the Fly album and having it on my iPod, if only for “Goodbye Earl”), but frankly, most of them probably voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election and probably intend to do so again in November, so I really can’t consider this particular mass as extraordinarily intelligent.

In fact, this particular bent of kitsch towards the conservative side is rather striking. Though it could be possible to present liberal kitsch, such as art commissioned by the Soviet Union, the reason for the purchase of kitsch is to be comforted, to the point of being able to drown out the troubles of the world. This act of willful stupidity is most disturbing in a democracy, where intelligence and active participation is needed for the health of the society. That is the true danger of kitsch, which I might even go so far as to call faux art.

The genre of pop music, however, has historically struggled to appeal to people with high taste. It may be kitsch, but yet it is aware of its nature as such. It persists because of the immaturity of the average pop artist, which is excusable as the ignorance of youth. The hope is that such performers will either realize the errors of their ways or leave the art to those with a better grasp of the purposes of art. Generally, as people get more experience and exposure to music, they tend to abandon most pop music for genres of more substance. However, classic pop music, such as Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra remains as an exception to the general rule, as such artists generally make a type of pop music aimed at a more experienced listener base.

Both hip-hop and rock and roll have great potential in the realm of the avant-garde, though they both have trappings that can render them into the realm of kitsch. In fact, the two genres have much in common, and it could easily be theorized that hip-hop and rhythm and blues are what rock and roll would be if their ancestor musical forms had not been taken up by those of European descent. If anything, they both have the ability to communicate profound thoughts about culture or fall to the trappings of excess. When hip-hop and rhythm and blues fall to talking about the performer’s “bling-bling” and how their life is “All About The Benjamins” (to quote the late Notorious B. I. G.), or when the drugs and sex become all that rock is about, these forms fail. For a good example of hip-hop gone bad, see Jay-Z’s The Black Album, whose lyrics are nothing but the rapper stroking his own ego and whose underlying tunes are so bad that the record label has released an a capella version of the albums for listeners to make their own remixes on that actually sound good enough to overpower the terrible lyrics, which is possible. After all, DJ DangerMouse’s The Gray Album (which was really more of a commentary on copyright laws and possibly the quality of Jay-Z’s choice of back-up music) which blended The Black Album with The Beatles actually is good art.

On the rock and roll side, the early days of Elvis Presley and his contemporaries in the 1950s were about general ideas, somewhat similar to the classical pop that had gone before. The difference was in the style, where they were making up new rules for art and getting the culture acclimated to their form. Of course, the reaction to Elvis was where the necessity of adjusting the audience was revealed. In fact, Elvis was first violently reviled due to his Negroid style of music and oversexualized lyrics and hip gyrations. However, with the work of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, the Big Bopper, and other early rock and roll musicians, the road had been paved for a wide variety of extremely avant-garde art forms related to their works to be generally accepted. Of course, by the mid-1970s, the amount of drugs and money associated with mainstream rock had eaten away at the art form, which had decayed due to its own excess. After all, between 1960 and 1990, many of the great rock and roll musicians had died due to their gluttony, whether through drinking themselves to death like Jim Morrison or John Bonham or overdosing on drugs like Elvis, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and a host of other musicians. Others cracked under the pressure, like the later example of Kurt Kobain, and opted to take their own lives through means other than intoxicants. Most who survived this time cleaned up (with some notable exceptions, such as Sir Paul McCartney, who continued to experiment with drugs until his third wife, Heather Mills, put her foot down). Of course, with the lack of excessive rock, the genre of punk rock has vastly decayed into kitsch now, especially with its modern variant commonly known as emo, which is the final debasement of rock and roll into kitsch with its overly trite ballads about love and loss.

Art should strive to communicate culturally important messages, not trite expressions of simple beauty, meaningless diatribes on how great it is to be in love (which generally gloss over the scarier aspects of the condition), or just existing to comfort. Art should be held to the highest standards, as it is how the cultural memes propagate themselves from generation to generation.

Point out errors, whether factual or philosophical. Any responses?

Hey y'all

2004-06-07T16:38:05Z

So I noticed that when I added this community to mine & Jason's I was apparently out of it. We are now members.

Anyone got anything to talk about?

Welcome!

2004-05-26T20:45:28Z

So, I set up the community for the presentation of obscure occult knowledge within the community in an online format. Basically, I felt we needed one. It's not really a website, but it can provide a means of non-real-time communication, which we seemed to be lacking. I know we had the mailing list, but it isn't quite so responsive, and it also has a tendency to clog inboxes. This way, nobody's inbox gets clogged.

Basically, I'm going to expect decorum here. That's all I'm asking. As there really is no topic per se (this is SPOOK, after all!), there's no such thing as being off-topic.

But yeah. Go forth and be SPOOKy.

The Society for the Proliferation of Obscure Occult Knowledge