Anticipation...
Tommorow -
The Beastie Boys, System of the Down, The Chemical Brothers, The Music, The Streets, Slipknot, Carl Cox, Powderfinger, Grinspoon, John Butler Trio, Concord Dawn, The Donnas, The D4, Blue Explosion, Regurgitator, Scribe and P Money, Freestylers, Le Tigre, Kid 606, Deceptikonz, Atmosphere, Hatebreed, The Hives, Polyphonic Spree, Spiderbait, Leeroy, Hilltop Hoods, Eskimo Joe, Infusion, Butterfingers, Little Birdy, Dallas Crane, Spazzys, Wolfmother, Decoder Ring, Bexta, The Mess Hall, Frenzel Rhomb, DJ Jonathan Wall, Money Mark, Digital Primate, Kid Koala, Rise Against, RJD2, Evermore and Cut Copy!
Am I little excited?
Hell YEAH!
Big Brother Forever.
This is pretty old news, but I've been meaning to mention it for a while.
Maybe I'm slow to catch on, but are human beings so starved for intimacy and connection, yet so unable to tear themselves away from their televisions, that they need to watch a version of Big Brother which runs 24/7 and NEVER ends?
And what happens when ratings start to drop? Unlike a soapie it's pretty hard to orchestrate a "Who shot JR?" in reality TV... Or is it?
Also, this line from the article grabbed my attention -
"Instead, they will be expected to spend decades in the village - working, marrying, breeding, divorcing and dying."
Breeding? How does that fit in with international bills regarding the rights of a child?
This sort of thing makes me think it's about time an asteroid came and wiped us out.
Anyway, that's enough outrage from me. I'm going to go and check what's on the tape from the listening device I left at
Nicole's place....
Nostalgia take 2.
Due to a severely over stimulated nostalgia gland and a self-destructive desire to obliterate any credibility I might have still possessed, tonight I convinced my housemate Chris to join me at a concert.
Which concert? You guessed it -
Frente!..... again....
Seriously though, it's not quite as tragic as it sounds.
As Sharn and I left the 1st Frente concert last Saturday we were handed a flyer. On that flyer was an invitation to a special "acoustic mode" concert which was happening tonight.
I stashed the flyer in my pocket and pretty much forgot about it. Then, tonight, because I had felt a little jipped last time, I was suddenly seized by the irresistible urge to attend just in case they played "Accidentally Kelly Street".
Luckily Chris turned out to be a closet Frente fan and thus our plans were made.
Tonight's concert consisted only of Angie and Simon, doing it acoustic and frequently using their voices to cover for the missing instruments (Simon does a wicked trumpet sound).
Tonight's Frente concert was lovely, intimate and again filled me with a sense of nostalgia. Which is lucky, since we had to endure what was possibly the world's worst support group.
Once again they closed with "Bizarre Love Triangle" and refused to play "Accidentally Kelly Street" (in fact, every time anybody yelled out it's name, Simon would reply "Kenny G? No, we're not Kenny G?").
So was it too much nostalgia in one week? Maybe.... Except that I'll be sure to work it out of my system this weekend when I go see The Chemical Brothers, The Beastie Boys, Frenzel Rhomb, Infusion, John Butler, Butterfingers and Regurgitator at
The Big Day Out.
A little nostalgia.
Whenever anybody tells me that they "hate" something, I tend to hit them with my standard response that "hate is a pretty strong word".
I' m telling you this so that you may be well aware of the inherent gravitas of the following statement - I used to hate
Frente.
In fact, hate may not even be a strong enough word.
I used to loath Frente. Detest them. I used to spend entire weekends projecting negative emotion at images of
Angie Hart in the hope that she would suffer a not-so-unfortunate accident with a blender, a watermelon and Eddie McGuire.
I remember fondly those days of Frente hatred. Those days spent relaxing on porches, wearing black jeans and heavy metal t-shirts, hanging out with friends, mocking the colour, energy and child-like tom-foolery of "Accidentally Kelly Street".
I also remember fondly the day that I changed my mind about Frente.
It had a lot to do with their covering one of my favourite songs (still to come in the 32 songs challenge) "Bizarre Love Triangle".
Now "BLT", apart from being a tasty sandwich, was a amazing song in the hands of New Order, but Frente made it their own. With one cover song they taught me that New Order could be beautiful and that Frente weren't quite as bad as I had originally thought.
It was mostly for that reason I was extremely excited about heading off to see Frente perform live last night.
Sharn and I rocked into the Corner Hotel in time to catch the 1st support act, Surrogate Turnip, who were lovely, if a little repetitive.
We then endured the drones of Joni Lightning and eagerly awaited a return set from Surrogate Turnip.
Surrogate Turnip did return, struggled with their sound quality, struggled to be heard over the talking crowd, struggled due to a missing band member and then rocked out hard with a live mash up of "Eye of The Tiger" sung over the beats of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby".
Then it was time for Frente.
Suddenly I was a teenager again... Without the Frente hatred.
90 minutes of beautiful nostalgia later, Frente closed their set with "Bizarre Love Triangle" and made my night in the process.
Although I've got to admit that, as I left, I was somewhat disappointed that they didn't play "Accidentally Kelly Street"... Which just goes to prove, I must be getting old....
Slander(tm) or Truth(tm)?
It's been almost a week since I posted, yet my stats counter tells me that there are a record number of people visiting this site.... Did ya miss me?
Normal blogging will resume next week, but, in the meantime, I just wanted to address this -
It would appear that
Avery Cardoza has dredged up a
certain creative diatribe written by a
certain creative absent friend.
So now, apart from being accused of guiding
Neurocam operatives, I'm being accused of -
"... going to promote civil unrest and kill children."
I would, of course, deny it, but I'm sick of denials at present. Let's just assume it's true and be done with it.
Thanks a heap cZ... You're going to owe me for that one...
Vicarious Textured Kudos...
I'm about to rush out the door so this has to be a short post, but I just wanted to take a moment to direct you all towards the most recent of
Cyzilla's amazing downloadable mixes.
For the last two days I have been listening to both the "
present intension" mix and the "
christmas cheer" mix. Heard together they have formed a remarkably pleasant soundtrack for my weekend, though I must admit that there's something about "Christmas Cheer" that really appeals to the repressed "
2 Many DJs" fan within... More power to the mash-up!
So point your browser towards them, give them a listen, dance around your bedroom and then award me vicarious kudos because he's a friend of mine.
This has been an unauthorised "Jumping On The Bandwagon" promotion. Proving once again that I'll never hesitate to cash in on the talents of my friends.
Accusations and denials...
There is a distinct irony in the fact that today, exactly one year after I first
began blogging about Neurocam, I am suddenly
being accused of being
much more heavily involved than I really am.
For the record, I have no idea what my name is doing on that document.
In fact, until I read
Lady J's blog, I had never even seen that document before... Although I did notice that a lot of its contents match the answers Maxwell Knight has been giving on various forums of late.
Is anybody going to believe this denial? Even though it's actually the truth? I suspect not, but that doesn't mean I should remain silent.
And this isn't the first time this week that I've been the target of such baseless accusations. A couple of days ago I received an e-mail remarkably similar to one that
Tript received.
It reads:
Sender: Aerten Goddess
Subject: Too many loopholes in a worthwhile and interesting story......
Date: Monday January 10, 2005
Graham,
Greetings from Texas. I have been following this Neurocam business in just the past two days and have come up with a lot of things. Everyone involved in Neurocam, or the lack of what it is, are art students or were in arts at one point. Either in college, university, or school. Yourself included.
Now you have a pretty elaborate blog and dealings with Neurocam as does Steven. You both are very good writers. You have put on your website a whole archive of information regarding this 'myth' organization. It is fun, I'll give you that. It took me quite a while to crack most of it and its fine. I expected more though. You guys have a lot of holes you really do need to cover up. First of all the whole Neurocam thing I think was intended as a project to see how much generated interest and fun you guys could have with it. Well you did that, kudos to you, you made the media, the web, and countless talk forums. You have even succeeded in reaching me here in Texas.
We all know that people want to feel important and like they are a part of things. People love a good mystery and sometimes even danger. I doubt that you were kidnapped, I mean who the hell would do such a thing, it's illegal. There are no real pictures by other bloggers except by yourself and Steven. Know what that means? Yes that is correct you two are somehow directly behind feeding the excitement and fire for the head of the whole thing which would be Robin Hely and or Peter Bourke.
I give them props because their brilliance has brought it so far. The only thing is that the entire thing is on the internet. You've never left your house to do any
missions, you nor Steven. The worst part is that Graham you could have gotten someone better to hold that briefcase, a real woman instead of a man. It is very obvious to me that the person in the picture is a man.
Everything involving Neurocam is just countless 'voodoo and death become you and mayhem' emails that you guys post on your site which further feeds the frenzy of people wanting in. I applaud you. Looks like your 'art' history background has paid off. The only problems were your videos that you put on your site. The countless loopholes found in the story and a few other key things. I know no doubt that you'll post this and start to deny deny deny, but the fact remains, this was solely a project on the internet. By the way you guys could have dumped that ugly transvestite, ie Shelly Innocence. It is so obviously a man.
Best of luck to you in your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Aerten
Deny, deny, deny? Well, to quote a biblical character (and Iocus Severus in one of his e-mails to Tript), have you heard the cock crow yet?
There's no need for me to rebuke Aerten's "it's all on the internet" theory here, since a pretty good job has been done over in the comments to
this post of Tript's.
Seriously though, I'm about to go on a 15 week tour and then, later in the year, I'll be going on another tour which is scheduled to go for around 10 weeks. Considering that means I'll be on tour for 25 of the 52 weeks of this year, when on earth would I have time to be writing documents for Neurocam?
The other irony inherent in all of this is the fact that I had intended to use today's post to announce my retirement from Neurocam. I simply do not have the time to try to keep abreast of everything that's going on at the moment, the rest of my life is moving at 100 miles per hour and I'm of the opinion that a year of my life has been enough to give... Unfortuantely, I suspect that this move will now merely be seen as an attempt to distance myself from the whole shebang...
Anybody else spy a rock and a hard place?
A few quick Neurocam tid-bits...
As Sharn and I are about to head off to the opening night of
Things We Do For Love, I don't really have time to put up a substantial post. There are however a few
Neurocam things which deserve a quick mention.
Firstly, I'd like to apologise to
Lady J, whom I recently accused of being jditezzio. She set me right pretty quickly with the following e-mail (which I hope she doesn't mind me posting) :
Sender: Lady J
Subject: Oh no! Please clear my name!
Date: Monday January 10, 2005.
Hey Graham,
In case you don't spot my message in your comments, just wanted to let you know that I'm not jditezzio. I don't operate like that.
The email you received can also be found here, which might shed some light on its origins:
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=116777#116777
Cheers,
J
Your name is cleared, Lady J, and I promise to check my facts next time.
Not only is Lady J not jditezzio, but jditezzio has also contacted me again. This time with the following:
Sender: Jditezzio
Subject: Peter Burke Alias?
Date: Wednesday January 12, 2005
http://www.kazakstankowgirls.com
Check out Rudi's picture.
The resemblance to
Shelly Innocence is uncanny...
The last e-mail of note has arrived from yet another Latin Monikered correspondent, although this one actually seems to have some information worth reading -
Sender: Methodius Umbrares
Subject: Re: The Crowley Connection
Date: Tuesday January 11, 2005.
Graham,
Rest assured that I am not one of your "loonies"; a Latinized moniker is the only thing I share in common with Oulios. It may be of interest to you that Maxwell Knight's namesake (04/09/1900-27/01/1968) was both a high-ranking official of the MI5 during WWII, and an associate of the infamous Aleister Crowley, referred to in jditezzio's recent analysis of Document 4- "Robert Henley to Fiat Nox".
From http://www.redflame93.com/Knight.html:
"He is probably most famous for his career as a British spy-master during World War II, having joined MI5 in April of 1925...It is believed that Knight's strong interest in the occult attracted him to the writings of Aleister Crowley and we know that Maxwell Knight actually had the opportunity to personally meet the Great Beast around 1937."
From :
"...soon after he joined the British Fascists he was appointed as the organization's Director of Intelligence. In this role he had responsibility for compiling intelligence dossiers on its enemies; for planning counter-espionage and for establishing and supervising fascist cells operating in the trade union movement.
Knight's work as Director of Intelligence for the British Fascists brought him to the attention of Vernon Kell, Director of the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau. This government organization had responsibility of investigating espionage, sabotage and subversion in Britain and was also known as MI5.
In 1925 Kell recruited Knight to work for the Secret Service Bureau. Knight played a significant role in helping to defeat the General Strike in 1926 and by the early 1930s was placed in charge of B5b, a unit that conducted the monitoring of political subversion."
-Methodius
Thanks for the info Methodius! I hadn't thought to look into the name Maxwell Knight (I had assumed that it was an alias)... I wonder if the names Bridget Fischer, Charles Hasting and Robert Henley also reference similar subjects.
That's all I've got time for now. Sorry once again to all the people who are awaiting response to e-mails. Life is more than a little hectic at present. I promise that I'll try to clear my in-box sometime soon.
Ciao!
Loonies... Woodwork...
It would appear that
Neurocam is destined to always bring the loonies out of the woodwork.
Just as
Tript,
Hamish,
Xade and
Lady J have received e-mails from Oulios Iatromantis, so have I, although mine reads a little differently.
Subject: Leave Neurocam -NOW
Sender: Oulios Iatromantis
Date: Sunday Jaunary 9, 2005
Dear Graham,
Let me keep this simple -– please. I must warn you, the Fabry crises are only the most obvious symptoms as a consequence of becoming too involved in Neurocam. As some have suspected, Neurocam is some kind of social experiment – just on a completely different scale than they think. The question, as always, is one of purpose. It seems that they're still only playing games with you, but trust me there's more at stake than you know.
You, of all the Melbourne recruits are likely in more danger. The repercussions for your sanity, and your genetic health, are profound. At the very least if you ignore this, fine, you've be warned. But don't let them inject anything into you, don't consume anything given to you by a Neurocam operative, and don't, under any conditions, remain in an air tight environment with any Neurocam personnel. "You" will never be "you" again.
"...the limits of one's learning are determined by one's own nature. Therefore, there is no point in talking about knowledge. Fear of knowledge is natural; all of us experience it. But no matter how frightening learning is, it is more terrible to think of a person without knowledge." Don Juan
And, more dangerous.
The truth is deeper, darker, and a whole lot more real.
Oulios Iatromantis ~
The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of the divinity that carries the man who knows through the vast and dark unknown ~
My "genetic health"? What the hell does that mean?
I would have dismissed this as just another Neurocam stunt, except that it seems to cover a lot of similar ground as an e-mail I received from someone named jditezzio (who, based on
this post, I suspect is actually Lady J) recently... Perhaps this has something to do with her... This e-mail was sent to me a few weeks ago, but due to general busyiness and slackness I hadn't yet got around to reporting, or responding to, it.
Subject: ANALYSIS OF "Document 4 - Robert Henley to Fiat Nox."(Posted July 12th 2004)
Sender: jditezzio
Date: Thursday December 30, 2004
I did not see any analysis of this document on your blog, so I thought I'd send this along to you. Feel free to post this if you want.
---------------
ANALYSIS OF "Document 4 - Robert Henley to Fiat Nox."(Posted July 12th 2004)
"FIAT NOX" is latin, which roughly translates to "Let There Be Night". Associated with chaos magic.
"Salutation on All Points of The Triangle" - A phrase associated with the "Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO)". The O.T.O. is an Outer Thelemic Order which is dedicated to the high purpose of securing the Liberty of the Individual and his or her advancement in Light, Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Power through Beauty, Courage, and Wit, on the Foundation of Universal Brotherhood. The Themelic tradition originated from Aleister Crowley.
http://oto-usa.org/
"Star Ruby" - a magical ritual originally called "Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram", it was modified by Aleister Crowley in his book "Magick in Theory and Practice". The Star Ruby is a basic Thelemic banishing ritual. It is used appropriately anywhere a banishing ritual is required in the preparation of a space--personal or for a circle or temple--where a specific Thelemic emphasis or setting is desired.
http://lionserpent.com/xxvanalysis.html
"The Middle Pillar" - Another ritual of the Thelemic tradition. It's meant to balance the Elements of a person.
http://thelemicgoldendawn.tripod.com/neophyte/mp2.html
"Mass of the Phoenix" - Another Aleister Crowley ritual assocated with members of Crowley's Order of Thelemites. The Mass of the Phoenix is a simple exoteric form of the Eucharist for daily use of the Magician. The Eucharist is "communion" or the act of receiving the Sacrament.
http://thelemicgoldendawn.tripod.com/phoenix.htm
"...of which the Master speaks" - In 1912 Aleister Crowley was named Grand Master of the OTO.
---------------
"The SAPPHIRE unit has demonstrated a particular vulnerability to Fabry crises and is being returned to Eng. for Alpha Galactosidase sluicing. I recommend caution in the mobilization of this unit."
-- Document 4 - Robert Henley to Fiat Nox. (Posted July 12th 2004)
FABRY DISEASE OVERVIEW
http://www.fabrycommunity.com/patient/about/fc_p_pt_fabry-disease.asp
Quoting from the article:
"Fabry disease is a rare hereditary disorder caused by a faulty gene in the body."
The periods of intense, burning pain caused by the disease is called a Fabry crisis.
"When people inherit the abnormal gene that causes Fabry disease, their bodies cannot produce enough of an important enzyme called alpha-galactosidase A (pronounced al-fa-ga-lak-toe-si-daze a) or alpha-GAL. Alpha-GAL is needed to clear certain cells in the body of a fatty substance called globotriaosylceramide (pronounced glow-bow-tri-oh-syl-ser-a-mide) or GL-3."
---------------
THE STAR SYMBOL AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE
The star symbol is the Star of David. If it was enclosed in a circle it would be called the Seal of Solomon, a warding or protective symbol. I can't make out what's in the center of the symbol based on what's on your blog, so that's all I can say about it.
It's all very interesting and it would seem that the Neurocam mystery is kicking into a higher gear. The only thing is that I'm not convinced that I, considering I'm about to go on tour for 15 weeks, actually have the time (or patience) to keep looking through all of this stuff.
In one week's time I will have been dancing to Neurocam's tune for a whole calender year... Maybe it's time to hand the baton of investigation on to some of the new operatives...
Then again, maybe I'm just worried about maintaining my "genetic health".
News...
It's been an extremely slow blogging week, due mostly to the fact that I am weary... In more ways than one.
Firstly, I am physically weary due to the fact that last week was the production week for
Things We Do For Love.
It looks like it's going to be a great show and the set is absolutely fantastic. The set is also absolutely huge (a three storey house on stage) and filled to the hilt with set electrics, so I 've spent most of the last week on my hands and knees, drilling holes and running things through wall cavities.
Lots of 14 hour work days combined with an ongoing bout of insomnia has resulted in a rather fluffy-headed, slightly strung-out Graham... Still, I've got today off, so I should be able to get a bit of my energy back.
My apologies to everybody who has e-mailed me over the last two weeks and has yet to receive a response. It's been a little crazy and I haven't had much free time in which to plant my arse in front of my computer. I'll start answering those e-mails over the next few days. This especially goes out to the new
Neurocamites Martin, Gabriel Blade and
Lady J who have all contacted me and must, by now, think that I am incredibly anti-social...
"Your e-mail is important to us, but all our operators are currently pre-occupied..."
The other bit of "weary" news that I have is actually remarkably good news - I've recently signed a contract and so can now announce that, starting from the 2nd week of February, I will be going on tour with the show "Weary", a new
Alan Hopgood play about the life and times of Australian icon
Weary Dunlop.
I'll be Head Electrician for the tour and, over a 15 week period, we'll be touring to Canberra, Launceston, Hobart, The Gold Coast, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.... It should be a blast.
I'm intending to keep a detailed tour diary here, but we'll just have to wait and see whether or not that's practical. If you're a friend of mine and you live in any of the above cities, you can expect to meet me for a beer in the near future.
It's 4am...
... and I can't sleep.
I keep waking up for no apparent reason and find myself staring at the ceiling once again.
Today is the first day of the
Things We Do For Love production week.
This is going to hurt by 11pm tonight.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Last night was a pearler. After a brief visit to FANG, Chris and I braved the crowds on the southbank of the Yarra and fought our way to a remarkably privileged firework-viewing position on the top of the Concert Hall at the Arts Centre.
A great way to see in the new year, especially since we were able to witness the chaos, whilst still managing to be removed from it.
Interestingly enough, the person I was standing next to directly after the fireworks went off was the event manager for the Southbank celebrations, who seemed, considering the chaos occurring below, remarkably relaxed about the whole thing.
We both, however, thought that it was quite odd that the crowd marshals seemed to think that their job finished at the same time the fireworks did. The Swanston Street Bridge (pictured above) was meant to be partially closed for the duration of the celebrations... "meant to be" being the operative phrase... Fireworks went off, barricades were removed and crowd marshals went home as the thousands and thousands of people swarmed onto the bridge.
Once the crowds had cleared a little, we made our way to the Gin Palace, where Long Island Ice Tea's were consumed in abundance.
When we finally left the city at around 4.30am, we were delighted to discover that the trams were still running (and free)... Nice to see that the local government isn't completely scrooge-like...
So this is the new year? Mmmmm.... Looks a lot like the last one...
What's my New Year's resolution? To come up with a poignant, but witty, New Year's resolution for next year...
