One: When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies was The Gods Must Be Crazy. I didn’t exactly understand it as a kid, obviously, but I still enjoyed it for some reason.

I’m happy to say that at least I understood, as my parents explained it to me then: It’s the story of an African bushman and his tribe who have no knowledge of the world beyond their own, of different cultures and advancements in technology, etc. They have everything that their gods provide them with and they’re happy with that.

One day a plane flies over their neck of the woods and someone throws a coca-cola bottle out the window and it somehow lands unbroken. The members of the tribe discover it and at first thing that the sky is falling. Then they presume that it is a gift from the gods, and they discover so many uses for this bottle. But with that comes an even more dangerous element in their world: property, possession, ownership of a limited resource. And with that comes envy, jealousy, hatred, violence.

The item must be removed from their world so that their tribe and worldview can be saved. So the protagonist decides to take on the task of carrying the bottle away, to find what he presumes will be the edge of world, and he’ll throw the bottle over the side and save his people, and the world. He is the ringbearer and he will travel to Mount Doom. But to do so he must journey for the first time into Hell, which comes confusingly in the form of the the modern world and western civilization.

There’s other elements to the story, of course, but that’s what I always remembered from it: The view of our world as interpreted by the limited perspective of someone from outside that world. Hilarity ensues, and as Arthur C. Clarke told us, to less advanced cultures the toys and tools (and tethers) of more advanced cultures would be indistinguishable from magic.

Two: A “Yes” is better than a “No” almost every time. But it really does matter how you pose the question.

Don’t believe me? Ask John Lennon.

Two Point Five: I’m amazed that we (the royal we) haven’t talked more about John Lennon here.

Three: This blog will be going away soon. Soon-ish. Probably some time this year.

The only people who knew that it was ending was Benjamin Light and myself, and that was only when we decided that it was ending. But like ourselves, I’m sure the two and a half actual readers of the blog were barely surprised with the official announcement.

Once they read it, one friend emailed me and asked me how I felt about the imminent closing of Counter-Force’s doors and I literally shrugged upon reading the email. It’s not like it’s my child or anything, but I’ve enjoyed being a part of the thing and will miss it. The next question this particular friend posed to me was whether or not I felt as if the blog had been successful. That made me scratch my chin. Eventually I was able to answer: “Yes.” To me, by a certain set of definitions, yes.

This blog has allowed me to do things and talk about things and share things that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do. It’s given me license to explore things that I’ve enjoyed learning about. It’s given me regrets and little moments of agony, things that I wouldn’t have had in the same way without this blog as the starting point, and for that, believe it or not, I’m thankful. Bad times will teach you just as much about yourself as the good times will, if you play them right.

Could the blog been more successful by my definitions or any definitions at all? FUCK YES. But it is what it is and it’s been great when it’s been great, and the game is different than when we started.

Take a look around at the blogsophere now, and compare what you see today to what that landscape looked like four years ago. Everything changes, which is great, and the only constant in the universe, but it’s bizarre how things change.

All of my favorite blogs from way back when are struggling now, it seems. They’re meandering, trying not to waiver in this quantity and qualitiy, but obviously there’s diminished output and even more diminished returns. All my favorite bloggers, those who aren’t struggling along with their blogs, have gone to print media, or to the netherworld that is the writing staff of sitcoms, and they’re flourishing. And they’re not just celebrated and envied now, but also respected. Which may or may not be new.

Four: Just out of curiosity, do websites and blogs still get turned into books, or at least book deals? Do twitter feeds still get turned into sitcoms?

Five: I would kill for the ability to travel in time. In fact, if someone were to put an ad in the personals looking for someone willing to go back in time to kill, like, Hitler, then I would do it. Sure. Sounds legit enough to me.

Picture a narrative, like a story in a computer file opened up in front of you, on your desktop or laptop. Look at the cursor. It can move forward or backward. It can highlight, change, control. The power is at your fingertips. That’s time travel.

Sorry, that’s a bit out of nowhere, I know.

Six: It’s funny to me how the old monsters are still around and still happy to scoop up the sexy younglings into their bosom. And then eat them.

And it’s understandable. A job is a job. A chance is a chance, even in a market or medium you don’t respect. Maybe you can change the system from the inside, but probably not, but who cares? A foot or even a toe in the door is more than what so many of us have now.

We all analyze and talk shit and then sell out. And then shit out some kids. And then die. That’s the cycle of life.

If Benjamin Light were here, he’d tell you that network television is soon to be a thing of the past. He’d tell you that the networks will all be dead or in their cancerous last stages in five years. I don’t disagree with him, but I would disagree on his time table. I think it’ll take a lot longer for them to die and for the new thing that comes after to really get its foothold. “What is dead may never die,” sure, but some things never really die, just shrink for a while. Like print media. Like publishing. I suspect that they may never fully pay the Iron Price, if you will. But it will certainly look like that at times.

All that said, if I were offered a job to write for a network sitcom, I would do it in a heartbeat. Are you kidding me? Of course I would. Fuck yeah. Any shitty ass job too. Two And A Half Men starring Ashton Kutcher dressed up like Steve Jobs? Only seen about five minutes cumulative of the entire show ever, but fuck yeah, I’d take a meeting or submit a spec script or whatever. I’m trying to think of an even worse example…

(FYI – This whole blog thing is obviously winding and grinding down, so if anyone out there wanted to offer me a job, let me just say… I’m cheap. And easy.)

I would literally pitch a buddy roommates sitcom starring Dane Cook and Carrot Top if I thought it meant the slightest possibility of a pay check and to be a breath closer to a creative industry I would like to be a part of. I can’t say that I’d love that job, because… Well, of course, I wouldn’t. But I’d do everything in my power to take that thing that I hated and try to make it something that I can hate less, and I’d much rather have a thing to let go than to never have had it at all…

Meta.

Seven: Here’s an excerpt from a conversation Benjie and I had the other day…

Benjie: This article kind of captures some of the reason that I don’t like blogging anymore: “The Web Is a Customer Service Medium.”

Marco: Interesting article. The last quote in the article kind of sums up a nice train of thought, I think.

Benjie: New potential podcast name: Pedantic Asshattery.

Marco: The medium is the message, and to this day, I still don’t think people understand what the internet medium really is or why things work, or why you should do something other than, “well, someone else is doing it.”

We should start a little dialogue here and turn it into a blog post – which would be so hip – and talk about why we’re bored with blogging, and why Counter-Force is ending, which would the exact opposite of a 5by5 practice.

This follows an earlier discussion/bit of theorizing we were doing about why John Gruber mysteriously or perhaps not so mysteriously moved his podcast, The Talk Show, from one podcast network to another. Also, there’s some ongoing discussion between Benjie and I about a new name for our podcast… Perhaps we can discuss that on the next episode of our podcast?

Also, check out our fucking podcast! Or, rather…

CHECK OUT OUR FUCKING PODCAST! Please. The latest episode is called: “K-Stew Has A Shotgun.”

Benjie: I guess for me, this article articulates why I want our podcast to be “this is entertaining to listen to,” not “I have some opinions on stuff.”

Marco: Well, the tactic that I intend to employ in the podcast, the one that I’m assuming will work for me, is that I’ll have things to say to you. I only ever kind of think about the fact that we’re recording and distributing that recording in some way. That may bite me in the ass later on, but hopefully people will just enjoy listening to us. But hey, it’s free.

Benjie: I live my entire life as though an audience is watching.

Marco: The only audience that I care about consistently is myself. And the million different voices in my head.

Benjie: There is an idea of a Benjamin Light, some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me; only an entity, something illusory…

Marco: “…but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”

Anyway, I don’t think the internet is going anywhere, and I think it’s always evolving and expanding, but it’s a shallow ocean. And there’s lots of waves with groupthink and LOLcats and porn bobbing up and down all over the place.

Benjie: I don’t think the internet is going anywhere, and what you see on it is just a reflection of culture.

Marco: Right. It’s not going anywhere and it’ll change, as cultures change, but the internet, to me, dances a fine line between not being all that real and being a little too real at times.

Or maybe not real enough? Excuse me, I need to go return some videotapes…

Eight: Was Marshall McLuhan the first academic rock star? I would say yes, at least for our somewhat modern times. Perhaps the first academic rock star was Galilleo, or Isaac Newton. They seemed like real chill bros of science.

But anyway, I’m just bullshitting here. This is just me carrying out some thoughts to their natural conclusions, for now. But if I could further borrow from the man…

Oh yes.

Nine: Here’s one of my favorite McLuhan fun facts…

Not long after he started teaching at Fordham university, and became a full on Academic Rock Star, McLuhan still felt the pressure for people to back up his ideas and philosophies with facts, with proven experiments. So he did so: He split up one of his classes into two, and showed both halves a movie. With the one half of the class, he showed them the movie on a movie screen. They sat there in the dark, watching a large screen with reflected light bouncing off it. The other half of the class was shown the same movie, but on a TV screen.

The result? The two halves took something different from the experience, one side able to discuss the film objectively and the other subjectively. Those who watched the film on the movie screen were able to comment on and critique the film itself. Those who watched it on the TV screen talked more in terms of themselves, how the film made them feel, what they took from the whole thing, etc.

Ten: I hope you enjoyed that story. I’m going to record myself saying that story on a podcast, then film it, then translate it into Japanese, and then back into English, and then I’m going to split this blog’s two and a half readers down the middle and I’m going to show one half that video, spliced into every second and a half frame of a super cut video of keyboard cat versus the Japanese further ruining what we think think/know of porn, and the other half is going to have the video broadcast straight into their nightmares.

The Aristocrats!

Eleven: I don’t mean to be continuously, in the parlance of the internet, fap fap fapping about McLuhan, but the dude was seriously smart, and had some good ideas that only become more applicable as the global village gave way to the world wide web. He was smart enough to realize that the book wasn’t just an invention of ease to deliver information and entertainment, but that it was also technology. The Gutenberg Man had his whole consciousness changed by movable type and technology isn’t just something that mankind creates, but something that recreates mankind. Hence… The medium is the message, we create the medium, which in turn recreates us, new media, old shit/new shit, blah blah blah, fap fap fap.

Here’s another quick McLuhan fun fact…

When they did his book which was to feature his famous slogan, “The medium is the message” as the title, they discovered that when the galleys came back that their was a pretty huge typo present: The Medium Is The Massage. Everyone was furious, except for McLuhan himself. He was a smart guy and probably had a good sense of humor, but now he suddenly saw his simple thought presented as a series of puns.

The message is massaged into the Mass Age which gives way for the onslaught of the Mess Age.

Peace be with you.

Twelve: I don’t know a lot of about the more technical side of the internet, and perhaps I don’t know enough about human beings to even go slightly pop psychology about the larger social networking that happens between us wee simple folk. Memes and SEO and the idea of the ecosystem are all extremely fascinating to me, but feel like they’re still in their infancy. Even with as tired and overplayed as they are in our brains.

I remember at the tail end of last summer Benjamin Light and I were having lunch at our favorite tacqueria and he was trying to explain to me the big tech patent wars that had been erupting over the summer. You know the one? The one in which millions of people who don’t understand how our patent system works anyway were complaining that it was broken? That one. Anyway, Benjie was telling me increasingly humorous stories about CEOs and chief legal officers of these massive corporations shit talking each other in blog posts and in YouTube videos. It was either the battle (of attrition) for public opinion or the ongoing struggle to get the last word, I don’t know, but it was funny.

At the time I made some kind of comment like: “The battle for the Internet will be fought to extremes, but with the tools of the Internet, which makes it ridiculous.”

Here’s a fun fact about me: When I originally typed up that half remembered statement just now, instead of “fought,” I wrote “thought.” Weird.

Anyway, I think the patent wars of last year were actually about phones, or something. Whatevs.

Thirteen: Anyway.

The old media may be dying, but it’s dying very slowly. We’ll have quite a bit of shade here underneath those falling giants.

Or, put another way: Orbits deteriorate constantly. Things fall out of the sky all the time. It usually takes a while, longer than you might think, and they tend to burn up before you’ll ever hear a THUD. And some things are pretty when they’re burning away into nothing.

Or, put another way still: 97 posts to go. It may/may not get a little messy on the way out. And then…

This is post #900 on ye olde Counterforce. We haven’t been as prolific as we used to be, and we haven’t been as loud and verbal, and maybe we haven’t been as excited as we should. We’ve enjoyed a moment together and we’re going to enjoy many, many more as well, but I don’t think this next part will shock you: Counterforce is going to end with post #1000.

Why end it there? Why not just end it here, or tomorrow, or four months ago? Because it’s going to end with #1000, that’s fucking why. Because the time is now and because I think this particular iteration of what you know as Counterforce is ending – if I can be as heavy handed as possible – and it has to end before the next aeon can be born. But it needs to go in its own way, in its own style, and with a little celebration. And a little dark forecasting of what lays beyond.

We’re not planning to bury it. At least, that’s not my intention. It’s coming to the end and I hope to leave its exquisite corpse just laying around for people to enjoy. But this isn’t a funeral. This is going to be a fucking dance party with eulogies and crazy LOLcat GIFs. There’s plenty more YouTube embeds and shit talking and Jackface pictures and theorizing about the fate of Don Draper to come before we sign off at this particular URL. We’re still going to talk about the things we like and love and hate and detest while also being super mega self-referential and taking this thing so far down the rabbit hole and up our own asses that the sunrise/set will seem like a perpetual strobe effect.

In short, we’re going out with banging and whimpering, and hopefully both in rhythmic and wonderful succession.

I remember that when the 80s ended, as U2 had their final concert of the decade, they went out on this intensely ominous note, telling their audience that they had to go away for a while and dream it all up again. Most people walked out of that decade thinking their favorite band was over, gone forever, but that wasn’t the case.

Again, that’s a bit heavy handed, but I’m this close to embedding Semisonic videos and telling you that every new beginning starts from some other beginning’s end. Perhaps instead I’ll just tell you that you don’t have to go home, but you just can’t stay here.

Not forever, anyway.

Anyway. Count your fucking blessings. You were lucky enough to know us and enjoy this time and this place and moment. We were lucky enough to know you and fap fap fap fap fap about things we liked or thought were important. And we’re doing to keep doing that here for another 100 posts, and we’ll keep doing it elsewhere. There is, for example, the podcast to brighten and enrich your days now. That’ll be an ever evolving thing. Put it in your ears and your mind. And keep your eyes coming back here for the next 100 posts. The final 100 posts.

And then when you close your eyes, all will go dark. But when you open them again, perhaps there’ll be something new there, just waiting for you to see it.

I hope everyone will come back. Everyone who has ever done anything with this site, or wanted to, and everyone who has ever read it. I want to bathe in all the old jokes and callbacks and motifs and references and the things we loved. I want the old shit to make friends with the new shit and then take the new shit behind the middle school and get it pregnant. And, with any luck, Counterforce will end this year. It’s kind of exciting to think that our last dance would take us right up to the stroke of midnight at the end of the world, right?

The important new dynamic in modern human communication.

The first image (fucking finally) from Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard’s Cabin In The Woods.

Are wide male faces a predictor for unethical behavior?

James Spader is joining The Office, but not as the boss, not for long.

Zadie Smith turning to speculative fiction and sci fi.

Infidelity might just keep us together.

Spike Lee to direct the American remake of Oldboy?

Above: Katie West summer print sale.

An oral history of Explosions In The Sky.

Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter.

The paradox that was G. K. Chesteron.

Don’t let them cut off your balls, boys.

At least Glenn Beck is gone from the airwaves.

An oral history of Michael Fucking Bay.

9 steps to foolproof outdoor sex.

“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant…. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no wonder, then, that I return the love. “

-Søren Kierkegaard

Harry Potter’s favorite magic potion is booze.

Speaking of which, some of your favorite fast food chains are now serving alcohol.

Also, the “experts” are now saying that some “light drinking” may be “safe” while you’re pregnant.

And: An oral history of the Harry Potter film series.

The evils of “like” culture.

“All I want is to have incredibly violent sex.”

from here.

Massive amounts of cheating discovered in Atlanta public schools.

Topless sunbathing in the bit city.

How Charlotte’s Web was conceived.

The perfect penis.

Alfred Hitchcock recalls working with Salvador Dali.

“You are a computer salesman – I am fucking JAMES BOND.”

Ours might not be a holographic universe after all

This is going to be awkward.

Jon Hamm will direct Mad Men‘s season 5 premiere (in 2012).

Terrorist “pre-crime” detector field tested.

The wisdom of crowds is a dangerous, stupid thing.

Of course Annie Hardy has a tumblr.

Important news: Ciara likes being naked.

Michael Jackson’s daughter is going to be a star some day.

Idris Elba is so hot right now.

Pictures from here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Food prices will double by 2030.

Here’s that Jonathan Franzen link that every other fucker has posted somewhere on your facebook, tumblr, twitter, or whatever.

Copanhagen suborbitals upcoming launch attempt in June.

Kevin Fanning on the daily commute.

Read more about that terrible sounding Wonder Woman pilot.

To the blogger who thinks saying “fuck” means I’m dumb.

An excerpt from Mindy Kaling’s new book.

The Hangover Part II has to be the laziest fucking movie ever.

The gospel according to Bill Clinton.

In September, DC Comics will relaunch all their superhero titles with new #1s, other changes.

Here’s a wild new drug that you should surely know about: Oxi.

Michael Kupperman doing Mark Twain’s Autobiography.

Is Donald Sutherland the last person to join the cast of The Hunger Games or could there possibly be more?

Hip-hop loved Gil Scott-Heron.

A drug that could erase your memories of being afraid.

PBS website hacked with a story about Tupac still being alive.

Chemists discovered why Van Gogh’s yellows were fading; a Dutch ornithologist remained unsure whether the yellow breasts of great tits change with age but found that the offspring of older females are likelier to die young. In Finland, tawny owls were evolving from gray to brown and sperm quality in humans was deteriorating. Religion was going in extinct in the Czech Republic. A sacred soft-shelled turtle in Hanoi, one of only four species left in the world, was gravely ill yet continued to evade capture. A female mite preserved in amber with her mate was observed to have been controlling the terms of their copulation. Florida could be up to 50 percent older than previously believed. Astrobiologists hypothesized that the first multi-cellular animal resembled cancer. Tonsillectomies make children gain weight. Weight-loss surgery makes children lose weight. Doctors touted the benefits of removing the gallbladder through the vagina. Texas scientists cut holes in the hearts of baby mice; the hearts then healed themselves.

The passages above are from the “Findings” section in the May 2011 issue of Harper’s and were written by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi.

See previously: here, here, here, here, and here.

from here.

Oh well, a shame. But I suppose the Internet will quickly find something else for itself to get excited about, right? But there’s still us and there’s tomorrow and a little more juice to be squeezed out of whatever could be “the future” and there’s whatever could possibly come with that…

Mad linkage:

Here’s 10 other recent predictions for the End Times that didn’t come true either.

German insurance firm held orgy to reward salesmen.

Learn how to tie your shoes right.

Quite possibly our first look at Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

Kirk Cameron vs. Stephen Hawking.

Ricky Gervais on The Office‘s finale.

If you do go up in the Rapture, don’t worry, the atheists will take care of your pets… for a price.

An excerpt from Chris Adrian’s new novel.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

by Beth Hoeckel, from here.

What really goes on in Area 51?

A volcano in Iceland called Grímsvötn has erupted.

Twitter shit about the Rapture from yesterday.

Inside the Robert Redford biography.

Stephen Fry joins The Hobbit.

New discovery about mosquitoes reveals why vampires will never exist.

Speaking of which, Joe Jackson is still a bloodsucking piece of shit.

from here.

“The future is already here… It’s just not even distributed.”

-William Gibson

David Lynch to release an album later this year.

The visual impact of gossip.

The story of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed/failed/totally fucking crazy would be adaptation of Dune to become a documentary. Here’s Dan O’Bannon talking about it a little.

Related: the team up between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney.

Just checking: Still no Rapture, right? Whew.

NBC cancels Outsourced. Good.

The trailer for the new film by Miranda July.

Carrie is being remade and Stephen King suggests Lindsay Lohan for the lead.

from here.

This trailer/movie looks really terrible: Horrible Bosses.

This trailer looks so so, but the movie will probably suck: Another Earth.

It’s Pilot Season! Trailers for (just a few of the) new TV shows that were just picked up:

Awake. Which… looks good, looks interesting, but I just don’t see a TV show that I would follow/watch for years and years there. Funny how both it and Another Earth‘s trailer use that song by the Cinematic Orchestra.

Alcatraz. The latest from the J.J. Abrams camp… The 4400 meets Prison Break, featuring Sam Neill and Hurley from Lost. This looks ridiculous, and I’ll watch it and just hope that it’s not another letdown like Fringe.

Person Of Interest. Another from J. J. Abrams, although it seems like it’s mostly just his name on it and the real creative juice is from Jonathan Nolan, writer of The Dark Knight and brother of Christopher. Looks interesting-ish, but Jim Caviezel? Was that really necessary?

A trailer for the documentary on the showrunners of all your favorite TV shows.

And a nice guide to the shows that didn’t make it to the Fall 2011 season.

“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”

-Dennis Gabor

I had a dream a while back that the world was ending… It was an odd dream, but not a terrible one, I guess. It’s just not something you can prepare for, the end of the world. You can’t ever really be ready for it. You just gotta keep on living, don’t you? And loving and listening to music and dancing and pursuing impossible things and enjoying mundane moments and people and doing all kinds of stupid shit. Take things seriously but maybe enjoy the ridiculous things that surround you just a little bit more? I don’t want to tell you something terribly cliched, like… Live every moment like it’s your last!

No, don’t do that. You’ll probably hurt yourself trying to do that.

But maybe every once in a while, take a single moment and consider that it is your last moment on this beautiful, insane planet, and just really ponder that. And think about what you would do if it wasn’t. Beam yourself into the future and peek in on yourself and see what you’re up to. Take a vacation into the future and see who you are there. Interview yourself and find out what went right and wrong in your life in the moments/weeks/months/years between now and then, and take good notes. And when you come back to the present, remember that little trip. Remember that time you went to the future and appreciate that you’re back here, and now, and then go there again.

The anniversary of Bikini Atoll is coming up.

Chinese “dinosaur city” reshapes understanding of prehistoric era.

Brittany Julious is sexy.

The kind of guys who stay single?

The Cat Rapture for Caturday!

Neil Gaiman on Gene Wolf.

Grant Morrison to write a movie about dinosaurs vs. aliens, Barry Sonnenfield to direct.

from here.

RIP “Macho Man.”

The fashion of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Fleetwood Mac to reunite in time for the end of the world.

The never before seen original ending to Alexander Payne’s Election, which is much closer to the book’s ending.

I don’t think I’m all that crazy about these Odd Future guys.

Skeeter Davis and Henry Moore.

Tom Cruise is a lonely robot repairman.

from here.

How to survive a mass extinction.

Plot details from the upcoming Tim Burton/Johnny Depp big screen version of Dark Shadows.

Will the internet destroy academic freedom?

A history of bedwetting.

Bionic hands! The future is now!

A good prank for the Rapture.

Oh well, hopefully this one was good practice for the next time the world (supposedly) ends. Still plenty of time to get your Rapture Playlist just fucking perfect. No sleep til 2012!

17 things about tonight’s episode of Doctor Who…

1. There’s a Supermassive Black Hole on the TARDIS!

2. Tonight’s episode was a bit… so so, I guess? I mean, not terrible, with some interesting concepts, but I just didn’t feel like I was watching something classic and lovely. Similar, as far as two parters would go, would perhaps be last year’s Silurian episodes, I think. Although it might turn itself around in the second part… An example of a good filler two parter on Doctor Who, for me, would be probably “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit.”

3. Doctor Who likes things that are impossible, that’s for sure.

4. Castles! Clones and/or shapeshifters! Old scary monasteries and darkness and weird mysteries that should just not be poked at and pondered by humans, who may be the real monsters themselves… I like it. There’s a little bit of a Frankenstein flair to this episode… Like I said, interesting concepts. Also… The Thing, maybe? And Solaris, sorta.

I never saw more than YouTube clips of the original British Life On Mars, or its sequel, Ashes To Ashes, but I’ve always heard it praised, and Matthew Graham’s writing especially. His script here wasn’t terrible, not really, and so far feels better than his previous effort, “Fear Her,” which he had to write in a pinch during the second season when Stephen Fry fell through on his writing commitment to the show.

5. Solar Tsunamis! That’s just goddamn fun to say. Say it five times fast, then a couple of more times.

6. The pacing of this episode was a bit of a problem, I think. It just didn’t grab you, and then if it did, it didn’t keep you. The episode came up a bit reaching on the level of “moody” and “atmospheric” that I think it would’ve needed to survive…

In fact, the more I think about it, it really feels like they did smash “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit” together with “The Hungry Earth“/”Cold Blood” and mashed them together. Two sides warring. The doctor pleading with peace. A new life form. Sharing and caring. Isolated away from others, trapped in the darkness, focusing on the guest stars, and ehhh…

7. By a bit of that logic, I wonder if that means that Rory will have to die again?

8. I kept waiting for Amy to hit him with a dart in the opening scene in the TARDIS. I mean, I like Rory and all, don’t get me wrong, but he seems like the kind of guy who should be getting hit in the balls with a football or something every other episode.

9. And, ugh, once the Doctor touched that goo, besides the copious hints of a some shadowy monstrous figure whispering “Trust me!” you just knew that the Doctor would have to face off with his fleshy (Doppel)Ganger.

10. In their in between shifting state, the Gangers do look a lot like Odo, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, don’t they?

But, oooh, does the Doctor know more about the future of “The Flesh?” He does refer to them as “primitive technology,” and evades questions about what he may already know about them, yes? Is this one of those episodes where he finds himself stuck at the crossroads of time, having to reinforce an event that he already knows must happen? What does the future hold for the Gangers that the Doctor already knows about? And is he trying to fight/change that future?

11. I really want to see the Ganger Doctor fighting the real Doctor. Who doesn’t want an evil twin?  Of course, that can only end one way: With you having to wrestle your evil twin to death while your friends look on, unsure of which of you is the real you and which is the fake…

Kill us both, Spock!

12. It was nice of them to give Rory a very human moment, and let him connect with someone who feels real, as far as being human goes, but isn’t quite. After spending two millenniums as plastic, you’d expect the man to have a little empathy. And it was nice watching him do something other than feel left out when the Doctor and Amy are off having fun/adventures/sexy flirtatious hijinks.

And Sarah Smart was really good as the woman who is no longer human but still remembers being human. Some interesting moral quandaries and questions there and if there’s anything that science fiction loves devouring, it’s moral quandaries. And questions. And Sarah Smart, I always thought, was good in Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander series, though criminally wasted. Nice to see Mark Bonnar too, whom I thought was decent in a show called Paradox that just didn’t get nearly enough respect out there. I’m surprised that Amy didn’t bond with him since she seems to bond with every Scottish person that she meets.

13. Spoilers…

Coming soon: Meredith Vieira, the Silurians, Winston Churchill, the Romans, and the Cybermen!

14. I keep hearing rumors that Rory is going to be evil or do something slightly evil this season…

Is it possible that he still has naughty evil programming in his head from when he was an Auton? And is he actually human now? How does all that work, that stuff from “The Big Bang,” with the Doctor restarting the universe and Amy wishing everyone/everything she loves back into existence? Seems to be like there would be some wiggle room there for plotline nastiness to be throw in as the season progresses.

15. After next week’s “The Almost People,” we have the big mid-season finale, “A Good Man Goes To War.” Should be exciting. The released synopsis for it says something about Amy being kidnapped and Rory and the Doctor racing around the universe gathering allies and calling it old debts to rescue her. And that River Song has to prepare herself to escape from prison and that the time for her to reveal her big, crazy secret is fast approaching.

Fuck, I miss River Song.

16. Also, Amy is still Shrodinger’s Preggers!

And her:

And also:

Eesh.

17. Also, I love Dusty Springfield.

Just know that before you say anything bad about her, well, then you better be bringing a fight with you.

Next time: More with the almost people and the rebel flesh and the Doctor vs. the Doctor! And also a massive cliffhanger of some sort…

and

and

and

and last but not least…

from here, here, here, here, and here.

And previously: go here, here, here, here, and here.

That’s a short film entitled Ollie Klublershturf vs. the Nazis, written by Lost‘s Damon Lindelof and directed by Skot Bright. It features a few famous faces such Chris Hemsworth (who’s now Thor in Thor, and was Kirk’s dad in the Star Trek reboot), George Segal, Rachel Nichols, Norman Reedus, and Samm Levine. IO9 posted it the other day and I was excited because I hadn’t actually realized it had been produced. It’s about a little boy genius who invented a time machine and is trying to stop the Nazi scum who’ve infiltrated his family dinner in an attempt to steal his device. It’s silly but good fun.

Anyway, I had heard of it before because I remembered reading an interview with Lindelof about the origin of his being paired with J.J. Abrams to write the Lost pilot, which ABC gave them after it let go of Jeffrey Lieber (but kept his initial concept about a group of strangers crash landing on a mysterious island, hence his name appearing as one of the creator’s of the show). The gist of the story is essentially that Abrams was intrigued by the idea, and already had a deal in place with the network, but didn’t really want to do it on his own, so he needed to find another writer to work with and whom he could work with. Along came Lindelof, with the script for this short film being his audition piece, and history was made.

Fucking “Stairway To Heaven.”

I love my guitar. I love playing it, when I play it, which is somewhat more rarer these days. But back then I was full of boundless enthusiasm about learning to play the thing and I was so nervous and so fucking terrible about it. And thus I convinced my mom to pony up the cash to get me a session with some dude with a pony tail at the local guitar shop once a week. This was maybe 1997-ish?

Mind you, all professional guitar teachers have pony tails. It’s like a fucking requirement. Same thing for the schlubby white dudes who work at your local Game Stop. Another Game Stop requirement: That hot Asian/Pacific Islander girl who wears really, really tight pants. After she leaves Game Stop, that girl will go get a job at your local gym and thanks to her, you will never ever ever quit your membership.

Anyway. Six weeks I spent with that dude who wanted me to slave over my guitar until I could play “Stairway To Heaven” in its entirety. “This is a right of passage!” he would scream as my fingers struggled. “But Page just stole this from ‘Taurus’ by Spirit!” I would scream back, but that was irrelevant to my guitar teacher. His name was something unspectacular like… Greg. “All the best mages steal and make the magic of others their own!”

That was a big thing with my guitar teacher: Magic. The occult. The focusing of one’s will onto the world around oneself and interacting and influencing it. Mastering your domain, and achieving a dominion with nature and this goofy playground we call reality. “This song is a magic spell,” he would tell me again and again, “and I want you to get this enchantment right.” It was a big deal to him that I attempt a passable version of Page’s solo. I tried to explain to him that that wasn’t my goal with learning to play the guitar, but it fell on deaf ears…

All I wanted to do was learn how to write songs. I wanted to entertain myself and write little pop ditties. Maybe I’d do something serious with them, but maybe not. They were going to be my own magic, intended for and belonging only to me. Three chords and a melody. That’s what someone had promised me, and with just three chords and a melody I could change my life. I wasn’t interested in learning someone else’s solos or playing them or anything like that, especially not for others’ consumption.

Honestly, If I wanted to masturbate in front of a group of people then I’d yank out my other magic wand and do so, thank you very much.

As my young fingers slaved over the fretboard my guitar teacher wanted to fill my head with stories of the occult powers and apprenticeship of Jimmy Page. He wanted to talk about Kenneth Anger and Lucifer Rising. He wanted to talk to me and get me excited about sigils and secret words. He thought it was important that I knew not just about the words and deeds and actions of Aleister Crowley, the “wickedest man in the world,” but that I knew the influence that he had had on some of my favorite musicians.

Mind you, don’t forget: This was the 90s. Back then we were either obsessed with the 70s or told that we should be obsessed with the 70s. And we should be obsessed with their obsessions. Like Tolkien and The Lord Of The Rings and Thelema and Aleister Fucking Crowely.

If you’re interested in the short version on Crowley, it goes like this: He was a shit. And a piece of shit. And full of shit. And he may have been onto something. I’ve talked about him here previously, if you’re interested, but I’ll say this… If there’s truly magic in this world, outside of a young girl’s heart or in music, then he might’ve made some real strides towards discovering it. I’m not exactly what I’d call a full fledged “magic” enthusiast, but I’ve always had an interest in the strange and eye towards a certain level of experimentation. I’ve done my research and from what I understand, you can do some of Crowley’s rituals and get the same results. But the thing is… so what? Do you really want to summon a demon? Look out your window. They’re already here. They’ve taken over!

(And sure, we know that the Devil is a hardcore patron of the Arts, clearly, but then he went down to Georgia and all I want to know is if I were to meet him on the road… Which of us plays the fiddle better?)

And sadly none of this knowledge that was being dropped on me by this sleazy dude with a pony tail and overpriced guitar lessons was new. Maybe/maybe not in this post I’ll go into an anecdote about my dad, but one of the few things my father ever gave me was an extensive collection of esoteric anecdotal knowledge about the heroes and icons and monsters and cunning folk of classic rock. Invite me to a party with your parents and I’ll be a fucking hit. Wanna hear a story about Keith Moon and horse tranquilizers?

Sure you do. But maybe another time. Anyway. After six weeks in a tiny little closet in the back of the guitar shop I finally got up the balls to tell my guitar teacher that enough was a enough. “Look, Gandalf,” I said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Fuck this. Teach me something else.” His style was to learn  songs and go from there, so show the technique and the craft behind individual songs, and expand it. It hurt him greatly to have to give up this little spell, but finally he nodded and acquiesced. The next song he taught me was “Angie” by the Rolling Stones.

Thanks to my guitar teacher I always think of this song as an ode to wanting to get fucked. “This song will release the flood, if you know what I mean,” my guitar teacher would tell me. I’d tell him that I didn’t exactly know what he meant and then he’d start a complicated explanation of how exactly the physical effects of arousal come about in a woman’s vagina. I’d cut him off then and say, “Ah, yes. I get it.”

“This song is all about pussy,” he’d tell me, simplifying it. He was a happily married guy, he’d assure me, but whenever he and his bodies would go out of town, he always took his guitar with him. If he met a nice girl, one who intrigued him, he’d pull out the guitar and play “Angie” for her. And then the flood would come, he lead me to believe. “This song will get you into serious trouble,” he’d tell me. “And that trouble is called ‘girls.’”Again, “this song is all about pussy.” And probably the pussy of David Bowie’s first wife, at least from a historical perspective.

I’m not here to talk to you now about my, ah, cocksmanship, or my luck with the ladies, or any of that. Everyone’s got a set of magic words or that perfect song that you can put on and it gets the kind of attention you want from the people you want amorous attention from. What I’m saying here is that was never what the guitar was supposed to be for me. It was not an extension of my dick. It was not a metaphor for my penis and it wasn’t something that I was hoping would get me into any trouble or any women. I’d like to think I’m beyond any kind of cheap metaphors or mentality about women and penetration.

FYI: I grew up, for the most part, in Sacramento, California. In and around that area is where this story is taking place. The thing about Sacramento is that back then, every guy you’d meet who had a ponytail and was over 40 probably had some story about how he was in Tesla for about five minutes. Other than that, the local music scene consisted of all this bad white funk and swing/rockabilly bullshit. That the guitar teachers would consider themselves citizen warlocks isn’t so much of a stretch, but that their world was some kind of undercover seduction community… Well, I guess that wasn’t much of a stretch either. Sigh.

Anyway. After I had mastered “Angie” to the approval of my guitar teacher, we moved on to “December” by Collective Soul.

Sadly, there was no deep knowledge to be dropped on me that had to do with this song or any kind of belief system behind it. It wasn’t about magic nor was it about impressing girls, not as far as my guitar teacher was concerned. It was just a song that was on the radio at the time and he liked it. As far as my tutelage in the guitarsenal (or the guitarmy) was going, it was busy work. Two weeks later I got a call at home from my guitar teacher’s wife to tell me that they were moving out of state and that he wouldn’t be able to continue my lessons, but a good  friend of his would and that the first lesson with him would be free to see if we were a good fit. If I was interested. I remember sitting there in the den of my California home and holding that phone and being silent for a long time. I was thinking, I guess, but mostly I was realizing that I didn’t care one way or another. The guy’s wife asked me I was still there and I was and I told her so and I said sure, and told me that the lesson with the other guy would be at the same time at the same place and I said I’d be there. Physically, at least.

Anyway, the replacement guy was a nice Philipino man who’s real name I can’t remember but he kept wanting me to call him Zen. Everyone called him Zen, he assured me, and I had a problem with that. He had a pony tail too, so I knew he was legit. His alternative credentials was that he had been in a band with Perry Farrell about six or seven years earlier, prior to that band’s implosion and Farrell going on to start Jane’s Addiction. I said, “Wow. That’s interesting.” I remember he smiled so big at that. “You love that, don’t you?” he asked. “All you kids love that, that I knew Perry Farrell.” I shrugged. I didn’t really like Perry Farrell. Or Jane’s Addiction. Maybe a song or two. I liked one or two songs by Porno For Pyros. And Dave Navarro looked like a parody of an alternative rock God masquerading as a magician in drag to me.

After that first lesson with the man whom I will sadly now and only now refer to Zen, I went where he instructed would be an abundance of the one album he recorded with that band that included Perry Farrell: Tower Records. Never found it, sadly. Of course not. Maybe it had never actually be conjured in existence. Maybe he had made it all up, which wouldn’t surprise me. That’s the thing about magic, kids: What you want doesn’t exist. It’s bullshit. But if you wrap it in a story and think about it hard enough and tell it right, you can make it real.

That’s the idea, anyway.

Back in the 90s, there was this concept of division in music as well. It’s a cyclical idea, part of our constant search for authenticity and what’s real and our witch hunt for anything that’s untrue. We disliked poseurs back then, I remember. Suddenly we all become Holden Caufield, righteously screaming on into the dying of the light about all those phony people that surrounded us.

That guy that I’ll call Zen here really hated rap and hip hop. He assumed by by my picking up the guitar that I must hate it too. He and I would talk about how Rock vs. Rap was really the battle for the soul of the humanity, or something like that. Just a year or two later, a bunch of assholes would be creating something called “Rap Rock” and it would probably blow his mind. Nevermind that a decade earlier Run DMC and Aerosmith had already shown us that we could all “walk this way.” It was really about taste, what you liked and what you disliked. It wasn’t about the Rockers vs. the Mods, not anymore. Or jazz and rock n’ roll (and the effects both have had on American crime). Some songs are about unification and partying and some are about solitude and otherness. They can be about one or the other and usually they tie into each other. It always comes back to us vs. them, and it’s usually the same. Do you even know what side you’re on?

Me, personally? I’m on the side that’s got the butter on it.

All I’m saying here is that in some loose definition, all music (and possibly all noise, depending on the listener) is pop, and it doesn’t matter whose side you’re on when you’re marching into the Holy Land to wage your stake in the Crusades, you’ll probably be singing a little song to keep yourself occupied and though the lyrics may change, the melody is probably the same as your enemies’ song. Like what you like and don’t like what you don’t like, because your music belongs to you and only you, but just know that sometimes only the concept of division is what divides and what you like and what you don’t like probably share the same address.

Anyway, that guy Zen and I used to talk about that kind of stuff at the guitar lessons my mom was paying for and, well, they weren’t very deep conversations. Thankfully the lessons weren’t that expensive either.

I’m thinking about this stuff now, but the last I really thought about this all was back in late 1999, or early 2000, a few years after my adventures with the guitar teachers (that was the mid-90s, and I was in high school then). I was homeless, just having turned 18, and I was very much alive in this world and very much adrift. I was living with a mess of a friend, a real asshole (but in our group of friends back then he was our asshole, as Commander Light had so perfectly put it not too long ago). It was late at night one night and we were sitting on a porch, this friend and I, and this hideous girl who he was fucking behind the back of another friend of his. She was a disgusting mess and there was a guitar present. I picked it up, so tuned out of whatever their conversation was about, and I was just finger picking, just finding a tune, something to keep my mind active. At some point I just remember my friend getting so upset with me and grabbing the guitar out of my heads and yelling at me, “That’s not how you play ‘Dazed And Confused’!” and then he proceeded to try to play the Led Zeppelin song for the amusement of his lady friend.

He played it terribly but she was easily amused. Eventually they left me the guitar while they snuck off into the night to fuck somewhere and I just stared out into the dark. I hadn’t been trying to play “Dazed And Confused.” I don’t even know how to play “Dazed And Confused,” nor have I ever cared to learn it. But I certainly felt dazed and confused. And there on that porch in the darkness I played “Stairway To Heaven” all the way through, just as my guitar teacher had taught me and forced me to practice all those years earlier.

That was the only time I’ve played it since I quit the guitar lessons and I haven’t played it since. I don’t even remember how now.

But that was then and this is now and 2500 words later I can tell you that I still have the same guitar I had back then and I still play it occasionally but not like I did back then, sadly. But I still play it for the same reasons I sought it out back then: for myself. For enjoyment. Hell, I don’t even masturbate solely for enjoyment anymore these days (I do it so that I don’t go crazy and kill people).

Magic is just another one of those things, like religion and politics and fresh fruit and an interest in other human beings. You believe in it, but in your way, and it’s not comparable to what or how someone else thinks or how they feel it. When people ask you that stupid question, “What would you choose if you had to pick from one, to be either blind or deaf?” and I think I’d have to ultimately choose to be blind. There’s so much in this life that I think I’m seeing but really not anyway, and plus, as cheesy as it sounds, I think I’d die without music.

In that regard, and in others, I haven’t given up on magic, but magic the way I feel it and understand it and appreciate it and practice it. These aren’t just words and a silly story you’re being told here. This is my incantation and this website is my talisman and hypersigil. And my grimoire. And if you’ve ever written on this website, or read this website, or even just these words right now, well, then you’re a part of my coven. Welcome to the game that’s disguised as everything. We’re telling a story that’s big and crazy and a little bit odd and hopefully a little bit fun and if we want it hard it enough and tell it right then maybe we can make it real. And if you’re lucky it’ll have a good tune that you could dance to.