Ramblin’ With Ray

(From Ray X X-Rayer #129)

© 2016 Ray Palm    25 December, 2016


Saturnalia greetings from my monastic cell. Actually on a day like this monastic tomb would be a better descriptor. There seems to be no one else around in this apartment building. I would be away myself but all my friends are busy with their families. As for me -- family -- what’s that?

Friends are important, at least the ones who count. There are also “friends” like those who compose 99.9% of your Facebook account.

An eXample of “friends”: I’m sitting at a table with a group of people I know, my seat between two women. The two women are discussing an upcoming show at the local planetarium. Being the helpful sap I am the use my Android tablet to get the information they need, location and show times. I mention I haven’t been to the planetarium in some time. Before I could say anything more one woman speaks right pass to me to the other one, asking if she would like to go. They make arrangements to meet up. I no longer exist.

So much for my social life here in Plattsfuck, NY.

For the most part no radio or TV lately for me. No special happy shows, movies, or music to remind me how isolated I am. I’ll glance at Google news in case something has happened like the world has blown up. (I hate it when no one sends me a memo about such events.)

Today I will pass my time writing another edition of my zine. I’m taking a break from buggy Windows 10, using a Chromebook and Google Docs. I would use Chromebook more often but there are certain programs like GIMP photo-editor missing from this OS. The available photo-editors on
Chromebook don’t offer the features I need.

Also this time no fancy layout or graphics, just text.

This edition will be one long essay. Back in the day when I was concerned about filling up space with my paperzine I would just add a few disparate thoughts under the title Ramblin’ With Ray.

Looking over the year I’ve produced a record number of issues with this ezine, 15 counting this one. Part of the reason is that I’m no longer tolerating the hell that is paperzine production, not dreading the effort of printing and snail mailing. Also I keep each edition short, much easier to manage.

Besides helping me get through long days of isolation this ezine provides a distraction when I need it. At the beginning of the year I was the health care proxy for a terminally ill friend. I had to make decisions for him when his mental capabilities were severely diminished. I don’t regret saying no to chemotherapy; radiation did nothing to help.

Maybe I’ll get through 2017 without any friends dying. Of course we all anxiously await the dawn of a new age starting on January 20th. This time around instead of brown shirts it will be red caps. The marching morons greatly value narcissistic sociopathy. They will keep making excuses or ignoring the facts right up to boarding a one way rocket to Venus.

* * *

Since the sun was out I took a break from this laptop to get some exercise and soak up some free Vitamin D. Of course in the dead of winter a sunny day can be deceptive, no cloud cover to control radiational cooling. That means being stuffed inside a protective parka, the vitamin D only entering through my half-frozen face.

I would prefer to live in a healthier climate but present circumstances don’t permit it. (If you’re tired of this downbeat writing send me money for my relocation fund. Or just read another zine.)

I brought along my camera which necessitated the removal of my gloves to take a shot. Frostbite nipping at my fingers. At least no one else was out walking around and only a few cars passed by. Empty streets with a lot of crows flying around. Maybe this will be the scene after the Orange Buffoon triggers World War III.

Anyway the temporary desolation today facilitated my photography. No one around to question my actions. I take shots of offbeat subjects, e.g., a glittering crushed soda can on the sidewalk. One time I was taking an image and a drunk hanging around a nearby bar asked me if I was some sort of artist. As opposed to him being a worthless piece of shit.

Moving on...

Time to review a couple of books that I’ve skipped through or skimmed, not completely read. I’m not one of those reviewers who pretends have finished a tome from cover to cover. I have a lot of half-unread books and articles so I have to prioritize my reading. Also with my partially damaged-by-winter-over the years brain my retention sucks and reading an entire book means more info that will get dumped for new info.

“The Hippie Trip” (1968) by Lewis Yablonsky provides a look at the then thriving flower power movement. Backed by his PhD in sociology Prof Yablonsky forgo armchair research and hit the road to see first hand what was happening, man. While approaching the “hippie world” with an open mind he discovered not everything was all flowers and sunshine.

At one commune some alpha male criminal types were like wolves among the hippie sheep. As Yablonsky observed no police, no safeguards against predators.

The Prof was also concerned about hippie parents giving their young children LSD to share in the psychedelic experience even though the young minds weren’t developed enough to handle the “turn on.”

Yablonsky: “In another situation I spent some time with a four-year-old who had been given LSD. The child seemed psychotic. She stared bug-eyed and from time to time jumped around in circles emitting sounds of stark terror.”

Note that Isaac Asimov referred to LSD as chemically induced psychosis.

“The Hippie Trip” includes a glossary of drop-out lingo. Here’s one for the comic books fans: “Clark Kent hippies: part-timers who live mainly in the straight society; weekend hippies.”

"One term not included in the glossary is “selective relating.” Only when it suited them did some hippie parents take care of their children. The parents were too busy getting high or tripping to be be bothered with child rearing.

Compare “selective relating” to the term yuppie parents used: “quality time.” Children got a few minutes of attention because their materialistic parents were too occupied making money and getting to the top. The excuse was quality counted more than quantity.

Chapter Fourteen is devoted to an interview with Charles E. Dederich -- "Chuck" -- founder of the Synanon movement. Yablonsky had examined the drug treatment program in a previous book (“Synanon: The Tunnel Back” 1965.) Yablonksy praised Chuck for being the genius who had helped thousands of people overcome addiction.

Chuck was among a group of ex-alcoholics given LSD in 1957 as part of a UCLA medical experiment. He stated his LSD experience had a profound positive effect on his life, leading to the creation of Synanon. Yablonsky spoke with him about concerns over excessive LSD use by hippies.

If you look up Synanon online you’ll find out how the group went from a drug treatment program to an alternative community to finally becoming a church -- actually cult is more appropriate term. Criminal cult. Mind control. Violence. Terrorism.

Synanon didn’t like one attorney who won a suit against the church. To show their displeasure Synanon followers put a rattlesnake -- minus its rattler -- in the attorney’s mailbox. He ended up hospitalized for six days.

The criminality resulted in Synanon collapsing. When he was arrested Chuck was drunk on his ass.

So much for LSD as a spiritual panacea.

Let’s switch from hippies to hepcats.

“The Voice of Eros - The Second Volume of the Pulse Creation Series” (1958) collects some of the writings of Ernest L. Norman, co-founder of the UNARIUS educational and scientific group. (Are there rings around it?)

For those who tuned in late the UNiversal ARticulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science tuned in late great personages such as Nikola Telsa, Sha-tok (Jesus of Nazareth), and Kung Fu through the clairvoyance of Mr. Norman. When he joined the celebrity club in the great beyond his wife Ruth took over until she deplaned from the earth plane in 1993.

There’s some interesting info about Ernest L. Norman on the back cover (About the Author.)

“Any attempt at a thumbnail biography which would accurately and fully portray the life of the author would be a gross disservice; sufficient to say the future history of the world will unquestionably prove the author to be, without exception, the greatest outlet of interdimensional cosmic knowledge the world has ever known; for he has indeed proven beyond the any question of doubt that he works with and from a higher world…

“This history resides in the many thousands of life testimonials of his students and although He makes no claim, they all know him as ‘the man of Galilee!’”

Yes, but I’m more humble than you are.

Now the personages from beyond Mr. Norman channeled were really aliens.

Apparently they physically dropped into our world to help out a bit and after their visits continued to provide help through channeling.

But if the words are spoken through Mr. Norman then how did he ever claim to be the author of this book? He would’ve only been a messenger. But he and his wife Ruth claim copyright on all writings supposedly repeated from our alien minders.

Anyway, getting back to the hepcat angle…

In Chapter 45 Robert Browning is bloviating through the ether about storehouses of knowledge on another world. Where? I don’t know, I only skim read this stuff. His nagging wife Elizabeth lurks in the background.

During his tour he comes to one particular center:

“Now we have finally arrived into the great hall of the huge section which is devoted to various types and forms of music. Don’t expect to see jive or bebop here. This type of music is strictly, as Elizabeth said, a degenerative form which is born out of some psychological principles of rebellion in the minds of the younger generation on the earth plane.”

How L 7, daddy-o.

Since Mr. Norman could get the dope on the future from his alien contacts I wonder if during his lifetime he targeted for ostracism death metal, punk or rap. Probably those music types generate bad vibes in the ether, man.

Maybe I’ll share some more wisdom from the Voice of Eros. It all depends on how much perusing I accomplish while sitting on the porcelain throne.