Monthly Archives: May 2009

Time is on my side.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

“I confess that I do not believe in time.”

-Vladimir Nabokov

“A User’s Guide To Time Travel,” from the super powers issue of Wired.

There’s a lot of other great stories in that issue, like stuff on how to be invisible and antigravity.

Richard Alpert/Ram Dass talks about LSD.

Desmond, and to a certain extent, the show as well, are being sued for sexual harassment.

Warren Ellis says that the future will be one of the eat or be eaten variety. Mostly the “be eaten” variety, actually. Prepare for the Robochompocalypse.

“Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”

-from A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite books growing up and one of those few books that I try to read again once every year.

Blah.

Speaking of time travel, the new Star Trek comes out today and I’m excited.

“I Want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.”

-H.G. Wells

Race relations and furniture buying.

Posted by Conrad Noir on

Are we truly living in a post-race America?

That’s a tough one.

But you know what?

Probably not. Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Who knows what wonderful things lay underneath Treasure Island?

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Today we talk about one of my favorite of those curious little oddities and mysteries from out there among the world. Today we delve into the money pit on Oak Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, and what is possibly one of the longest running treasure hunts into the unknown.

The earliest recorded beginning of this tale starts back in 1795, when 16 year old Daniel McGinnis was wandering around Oak Island, a tiny uninhabited island a short rowboat ride away from Nova Scotia, and discovered a curious circular depression in the ground in the middle of a clearing. Investigating further, he discovered that several branches had been cut away for a tackle block to be used above the depression in the ground. Since there had been reported stories of pirates in the area, McGinnis decided to leave and come back with some friends later.

Over the next several days, McGinnis and his teenage friends worked over this mysterious hole, which they found to be quite deep. Just a few feet down into the hole, they found some flagstones and the marks of a pick into the dirt. As they continued to probe into the hole, they found a layer of logs laid out every ten feet down, but had to abandon their excavation 30 feet down due to lack of supplies or skills to push further. But what they had found had astonished, especially since it was clearly the work of human engineering.

This is just the beginning of what would later come to be known as the Money Pit.

Eight years later, McGinnis and his friends returned, along with the Onslow Company, formed with the express purpose of literally getting to the bottom of this mystery, but their efforts, if you’ll pardon the pun, only deepened the mystery of the Money Pit.

They continued to push down into the hole, all the way down to the 90 foot mark, still finding the layers of logs every 10 feet. But in addition to that, they also found at the 40 foot mark, a layer of charcoal, and at the 50 foot mark, a layer of putty, and at the 60 foot down mark, a layer of coconut fiber. But at the 90 foot mark, one of the most puzzling aspects of this mystery was found: A stone inscribed with a mysterious writing in symbols on it.

from here.

No actual pictures were taken of the stone, which has since been lost, but one translation claims that the symbols (seen above) say, “Forty feet below, two million pounds lie buried.”

Naturally, that only energized the men doing the excavation and they began pulling up the layer of oak there at the 90 foot mark. In doing so, water began seeping into the hole, but they couldn’t tell from where. By the next day, the hole had been flooded up to the 33 foot mark.

Since pumping didn’t work, a new pit was dug in the following year, one that ran parallel to the original and went down to the 100 foot mark, and then went over into the original. Again, that pit flooded with water and the search was abandoned for 45 years.

What was later discovered by the attempt to get to the bottom of the Money Pit that followed the Onslow Company was that the water was part of a booby trap designed by the designers of the Money Pit. In their digging, they had unleashed a 500 foot causeway that went to the nearby Smith’s Cove. As soon as any water could be pumped out of any dug pit in the area, it would be quickly refilled the sea.

from here.

Then came the discoveries of the beach, in which those investigating Oak Island discovered had five channels laid out underneath for drawing water into the booby trap,with the five channels in the shape of fingers of a hand. In fact, the whole beach was fake it was soon learned, just made to hide the water deliver system.

The story of Oak Island and the quest to get to the bottom of the Money Pit by no means ends there, but I’ll let you do the rest of the reading on your own. It’s a fascinating tale and has quite a few celebrity enquirers (Franklin Delando Roosevelt was part of one of the dig groups and kept up with news of further excavations for the rest of his life) and has been heavily romanticized over the years (despite the six deaths in the process of the variou excavation attempts). Here’s a short list of theories as to what could be in the Money Pit or who could have been involved with it’s creation:

Vikings! That theory’s for poor people though.

Francis Bacon.

Captain Kidd.

Blackbeard.

Other various pirates of just about any kind.

The Knights Templar. Which only leads to either…

The Holy Grail. Or…

Mary Magdalene. Or…

Satan himself!

The Spanish. Perhaps there’s a stranded galleon of gold down there? Like…

The Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion.

A ghost. As in, there’s a ghost imprisoned down there.

The French!

The British, doing who knows what during the American revolution.

Shakespeare and buried below is his lost plays. Ooh. That would tie back into Francis Bacon, right?

Either Incan or Mayan treasure. Maybe the secrets to surviving 2012? (Actually, no, that’s in an upcoming Counterforce post, actually).

Aliens! Because aliens are always fucking involved, right? I sure hope it’s the lizard ones, not the grays with their anal probing of cows tendency.

But all of that good stuff right there. You just know that when you’re doing something wacky and mysterious, that if all of those gathered above could be potential theories then, well, you’re just onto a winner, right?

Come back soon and we’ll go over the third mysterious thing/place I wanted to talk about. And that one is my favorite…

Public enemies, The Lady in Red, and The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

I was browsing through last week’s issue of Entertainment Weakly, er, I mean, Weekly, which was the summer movie preview, and I was reading the bit of Michael Mann’s new movie about John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and my favorite French hottie, Marion Cotillard.

The little one page piece on the film, called Public Enemies, is interesting depth-less write up on the upcoming film, talking about it’s timeliness in dealing with a folk hero who robbed from the fat cat banks that had turned enemy of the people, but it was much this paragraph caught my eye:

Johnny Depp had also been flirting with the idea of playing the legendary thief for a while. Depp, who grandfather ran moonshine on the back roads of Kentucky during Prohibition, grew up idolizin outlaws like Dillinger: “Some people might disagree, but I thin he was a real-life Robin Hood,” says Depp of the bank robber, who at least managed the rob-from-the-rich part of Robin Hood’s credo. “He knew that the clock was ticking, and boy, if righ now wasn’t the time to have a good time, then  don’t know when it is!” Needless to say, when Mann approached Depp to play Dillinger, the actor didn’t need to be held at gunpoint.

I wish John Dillinger had been more as Johnny Depp describes him, or as he probably plays him. It’d be nice to think that either of those were the case rather than the truth, that Dillinger was just a sociopath and a murderer. But maybe seeing it that way is a fnord?

Hell, I’d be happy to think of Dillinger as he appeared in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a bank robber who walked through walls and was practically ageless (and quite possibly the guise of an ancient shaman, but that’s a whole other kinda thing, isn’t it?) and really just wants to help “the good guys” immanentize the eschaton. And to kick some Masonic ass, but that’s only natural.

from here.

I guess I’m curious to see how they’ll handle the “betrayal” at the hands of the lady in red or if there truly is a case of mistaken identity in the Biograph theater and Dillinger gets away in the end, as he may possibly have done in real life (after death?).

Or maybe not.

Saturdays are boring.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

It’s a Saturday morning, somewhere in the vicinity of 7 AM as I type this (who knows when I’ll post it, could be days knowing me), and I’m stuck here at work. Ugh.

In the parking lot outside are 9 cars and about thirty people commiserating before compiling into problably an easier carpooling configuraion and driving to the nearby local air show. The other day someone asked me why I was working instead of going to the air show. My answer was in two parts:

1) I don’t give a shit as I’m above the age of 6.

2) Haven’t you ever seen any TV show where they show “real life” videos? People die at air shows, man!

Anyway, the people in the parking lot are drinking. I can see the suds and foam of beers in the early morning sunlight from where I sit passively blogging away. I’m tempted to go out and tailgate with them, just a little bit. I’ll pretend I know them, throw out some stories about how I’m here as a friend of Gary’s and “AIR SHOW WOO HOOOO pass me another cold one, okay?” I’ve done this kind of thing before, no worries.

This is billed as the ultimate tailgate trailer. I keep for the humanity that devoted scientists to concoct this.

I’ve joked about it before but I have crashed a funeral before. Or a wake. Whatever part of the thing it was where the mourning was still going on but there was wine and finger food. It’s not as sexy as when Will Ferrell does it in Wedding Crashers but I won’t lie. It’s got a certain allure.

Fuck me, a Saturday at work. I lied and told Lollipop that I wasn’t going to work today, but mostly because I realized that she’s semi-expertly deduced a good majority of my schedule based on my email frequency and gchat availability. Not bad on her part. Sorry, Lollipop, I was half being sarcastic this morning when I said I wasn’t going to work this morning and half just flat out lying. You know how I do.

Saturdays are boring. Well, no, that’s not true Sundays are boring, but I tend to cram a lot of adventure into them, so I’m not going to knock them too much. Saturdays are that make or break down of your typicalweekend adventure.

It’s been Robert Altman week over at This Recording this past week and it’s been excellent, as they usually do. Definite highlights include Tyler Coates’ write up of Nashville, Molly Lambert talking about California Split and menfolk in general, and Georgia Hardstark on (and off) McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Oh, and Molly Young, of course, on The Long Goodbye. Such a weird, wonderful film, that one.

Especially since, back in the 70s, I feel you really only had two viable male role model ideals coming out of the film industry: Elliot Gould and Han Solo. I may not actually mean that, but it’s early and it sounds good and authoratative.

I’m a little sad that no one did anything on one of my favorite entries in the Altman filmography, Images. I should talk about it at some point. I remember I once was talking abot films with August Bravo and I told him he should see Images because it was great and I loved it and that was enough of  reason. This was in emails or text messages and he said, “Yeah, I’ll definitely look for it.”

A half an hour later he texted/emailed me and said, “I’ll probably never see that movie. Whatever it was.”

Ha ha! That’s fine, August, that’s cool. Didn’t hurt my feelings at all. Bros! By the way, I slept with your girlfriend. I don’t know which, but one of them, okay?

In case you’re curious: This is how men of good camraderie one up each other in a playful and fun way. It invovles our penises and not our brains, so it’s easier for us to retain knowledge about movies we like, nacho stylings, and keeping straight whether we’re tits or ass or legs men. That’s really what we’re all about for the most part.

Of course I’m referring to straight men above. For gay men, bicurious men, or asexual men, or men who are in the process of changing which gender box they put the check mark in on when they’re applying for jobs in these tough recession-drenche times, it’s essentially the same, just give or take a few things.

To prove it, hardcore man-style, I’m going to march outside and have  few beers at the pre-air show tailgate party, scream out a few sports-esque things as if I know what I’m talking about, like, “PUT PETE ROSE IN THE HALL OF FAME ALREADY FOR FUCK’S SAKE, YOU ANIMALS!” Somebody will then invariably have car trouble and I’ll say, “I’ve been drinking, so don’t worry, I know what I’m talking about,” and I’ll fix their engine with a hammer. Then I’ll club one of the women over the head (not with the hammer, mind you, that’d be monstrous) and drag her back to my love nest. I’d like to say that we’ll probably do something adult and very kinky there, but we’ll probably just watch Images and discuss it over some nachos. It’s tragic, but this is how I tend to roll more often than not.

And what are you doing with yourself today?

May Day.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Yesterday at work, my boss was going on and on about all the fun she used to have on May Day when she was a kid. And yet, in my mind as I was listening to her, I kept thinking of The Wicker Man.

The original, of course. The Robin Hardy classic of fuck up wonderfully weird cinema, not the Neil LaBute/Nic Cage train wreck.

Clearly, there is something very wrong with me.

In other news: tonight is the antepenultimate episode of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (in it’s television broadcast format, though there will be an epilogue episode apparently on the DVD). Having stuck with this show this whole mini season that it’s been airing out of respect and loyalty to Mr. Whedon, I have to say that the show has slowly spread the wings of what it’s capable of, to give you just a taste of it’s potential, but has clearly made no great strides to reach said potential or full capacity.

The show so far plays out like a classic sci fi novel, but only makes minor stabs at tackling the notion of identity for hire and thankfully, the idea of sexual passengers that Joss played up for controversy’s sake in early interviews didn’t materialize too much. This is vastly better television than you get most other nights of the week on any other channel, so I’d say enjoy it while you can, but that’s not going to happen. Instead I’ll just suggest you pick up the DVD set in a few months.