Banger's Blog

I've been connecting with a lot of allies who are geographically distant.  During a recent conversation, some of us discussed whether it is  feasibile to send messages psychically or astrally, and I remembered this little gem I wrote back in 1987.  Although I stand by most of what I wrote then, I would have taken a very different position on much of this had I written it today, but think it still stands on its own merits, both as a basic how-to, and as a historical document. I've cleaned it a bit and added a couple of asides for context and currency, but have preserved my original exuberance and perhaps naiveté .   FORMULATING LINKS Suppose you want to communicate with an ally but they are too far away for you to speak to or see in person. How do you communicate with them across the seemingly unbridgeable gulf that separates you? In those dark days before the Internet, magical links were one of the only alternatives.  A magical link is a means of ...

   I exchange eyes with the Mad Queen     the mirror crashes against my face and bursts into a thousand suns   all over the city flags crackle and bang   fog horns scream in the harbor   the wind hurricanes through the window   and I begin to dance the dance of the Kurd Shepherds Harry Crosby, Assassin Anita Lane has left the stage. Although her moments in the limelight were fleeting, and her body of work is quite small, she cast a long shadow on the Melbourne music scene and beyond, for which I believe she received far too little recognition.  I do not claim to have known Ms. Lane, but I was cast into her orbit once, many years ago backstage at a Birthday Party show in Denver.  Mercury Cafe, April Fools Day of 1983.  It was the Birthday Party's first foray (Note: Mick Harvey corrected me on this - the band had done a brief tour in 1981, playing the Northeast and Chicago) into the US, and, as it turned out,...

Have you ever wondered if there is a shortcut, or at least a pattern, to getting your book on the NY Times best-seller list? More than 100,000 new books are published each year, but only about 400 of those will become best-sellers. Albert-László Barabási, a data scientist, analyzed the sales patterns of the 2,468 fiction and 2,025 nonfiction titles that made The New York Times best-seller list for hardcovers over the last ten years.   Here are some quick facts: Half of the best-selling non-fiction titles were memoirs or biographies. Only 1.1% were about science 67% of the fiction titles were genre fiction like mystery, action, or romance (think Danielle Steele or James Patterson, who has had 51 best-sellers in the last decade) 85% of best-selling fiction authors have had more than one book on the list.   Only 14% of non-fiction authors hold this distinction. You don't have to sell as many books as you think – a book can make the non-fiction list by se...

A single choice can have huge, unpredicted consequences.  Today, the 100th anniversary of the End of the War to End All Wars, presents a uniquely personal example of this. Instead of fighting in World War One, like he thought he would have to (against his conscience and better judgement), my Granddad spent most of his WWI time in the Horse Pistol with the Red Nose Curses. As he put it back in the late 60s: "I joined the Royal Navy and passed exams for Chief Petty Officer, my trade helps. My reason for joining the Navy, because there was less chance of having to kill. Being killed would not seem so bad. Anyhow, getting tired of waiting for a ship, Bert Bailey (my best pal) + myself joined the Royal Engineers, + before leaving I was instructing fellows in Sig nalling. However, I was unlucky enough to get a double Hernia with heavy pontoon. Later, which was obscured to me, I was being taken to hospital, there to stay for 5 months with acute nephritis. From the Ramily Road...

When I was in Lawrence, Kansas last week, I stopped by the Spencer Museum of Art .  It's a fairly small museum, especially by Smithsonian standards, but they had a really nice, eclectic collection.  Of course they had the prairie artists like Thomas Hart Benton that you'd expect to see in a Kansas museum.  However, there were also pieces from every culture you could think of: Oceania, India, Japan, China, West Africa, Greco-Roman.   They had a couple of Renaissance carvings, a medieval reliquary, and there was a large collection of Haitian art that reflects the range of modern Haitian art.  And there was a very nicely curated and displayed selection of modern art: Warhol, Motherwell, and Shimomura.  It's well worth the detour and the cost of admission (free!). While I was there, I noticed a couple of pieces by Wendell Castle , a designer of contemporary furniture.  I have a bit of a personal connection with him, as he and my mother went on a fe...

Down the Rabbit Hole Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei by Barnaby Martin Almost any time I read an interesting book, I find myself going down rabbit holes: looking up words, tracing down quotes, researching events, concepts, and people - you could call it cross-referencing or simple distraction. I suppose I just do it because I can - I feel that the internet exposes endless nests and warrens beneath the rabbit hole.  I almost never do anything with the results of these detours; in fact, I rarely even save the links, let alone any of the information I dredge up. Yet I realize that the rabbit holes have become the most meaningful part of the experience of reading for me of late, so I feel I should do something with the results of my diversions. I picked up Hanging Man at the National Gallery of Art because I am interested in China and Ai Weiwei. I thumbed through it and there were some interesting quotes, so I grabbed it. Full disclosure: I wouldn't have bought it...