The next incarnation

Everything is back up.

Meanwhile, the new site is launched. (Though we're still working out a couple of the kinks.)

The herky jerky motion

It seems the joinmycult.org server is on the fritz.

We're in the process of transferring a lot over in preparation for the new fallen nation website, however this is unfortunate as a lot of places on the web point to media hosted where jmc.org presently lived (quartzhive.)

So - sorry about that.

But... soon... new website.

Eyes burn, must sleep.

Whackness.

Fallen Nation audiobook: prologue

The story begins with a glimpse of the future, from the swamps of the deep south and a tide that never rolls out...

(Order
Fallen Nation from Amazon.com.)

Direct link to audio.

(Art for this episode's header by Jessika Kaos.)

Fallen Nation 2nd edition released in time for the Holidays.

(This message was previously sent to a list of individuals through private email. I wanted to make most of it public, since I almost without a doubt forgot some people that I wanted to get it to.)

After months of wandering around in a caffeinated haze with crumpled manuscript in tow, inadvertently alienating friends, and keeping my editors up well past their bedtimes, the second edition of my novel Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning is complete. This edition is 16 pages lighter, even after the addition of the 8 page black and white CC "Welcome To The Apocalypse" comic. Most of what went was dead wood. In the process the structure was re-worked somewhat.

I had a lot of outside editorial input, from readers, from people I've worked with in the past, but I have to say that the edited copy that Jason Stackhouse gave back to me was the most useful- that is, what I could read through the smears of Chinese food and pages of red lines and chicken-scratch. Thanks for not kissing my ass, Jason.

So, why am I contacting you? You either asked to be notified, or are a past friend, accomplice or associate that I thought should be notified. This is not part of a mailing list, it is a one time only email, so you do not need to hunt around for the "DO NOT WANT" button. But I do hope you take the time to read this letter, this project is going to be quite a trip.

As many of you know, we're now living in a time when it has never been easier to produce independent media (which is not to say that it is easy), but it has probably never been harder to sell it. At least not in the substantial quantity required for sustainability. So, this is likely going to be an uphill battle for Mythos Media (www.mythosmedia.net), one which could benefit from your help. For the creatives amongst you, we can offer some support in return. (More on that in a second.)

Here are some of the ways you can become an "early adopter" and still keep your day job and/or cherished addictions:

* Enjoy and share the prologue podcast: That's what it's there for. This podcast contains original music and readings by P. Emerson Williams (Choronzon) & Tara Vanflower (Lycia.) It is released under a creative commons license, which means it can be added to other people's podcasts so long as it is included in its entirety. If you or people you know run podcasts, feel free to use it for that purpose, to fileshare it, or freak out your friends by playing it for them once you've gotten them so drunk they can barely walk. (It's a pretty creepy episode.)

If you like what you hear, you'll be happy to know that we are going to be producing the entire book as an audiobook of this nature. Keep an eye peeled on Alterati.com, we'll be releasing episodes as they are produced.

* Put the Fallen Nation banner on your website, blog, etc. The code is:

{a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Nation-Babylon-James-Curcio/dp/1419672657/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-4077266-8569725?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187938907&sr=8-2 " target="_blank"}
{img src="http://www.joinmycult.org/media/fallennation/fn_top_banner.jpg"}
{/a}

(Replace with proper HTML 'carrots.')

* If you are also engaged in clusterfucks such as myspace, facebook, etc. refer your friends to the book. This can be done through a bulletin, or through applications on facebook such as Visual Bookshelf. Applications such as bookQube provide other means of sharing your readings preferences with others.

* If you have friends in the press, distribution, or media production as I know some of you do, send the electronic press kit their way. It is online here, and contains art, and excerpts from the first chapter and RealitySandwich interview.

* Blood sacrifice. I'm not going to give instructions here but I'm sure "Witchcraft for Dummies" has all the information you need. Every drop counts!

* Add tags or put up a review on the Amazon page.

* If you can make use of them, I can provide full color 4x6 Fallen Nation fliers to you. Just email me privately with your mailing address and I will have them shipped.

* Feel free to forward this message to others you know who would be interested in this project.

For fellow independent producers & artists in this list, my hope is we can continue to create a network here. One step in that direction has been alterati.com, which you should check out if you're not familiar. (We've interviewed some of you there in the past year.) If you are presently working on a creative or cultural work and would like press, contact me regarding that. The united we stand divided we fall cliche has some validity when it comes to independent media.

Finally, some of you have asked me this question, so let me answer it... This is indeed the edition of the book that we will be offering for a while, and later editions will simply contain very minor revisions (such as typos that invariably popped up in the process of fixing the typos in the last edition.) It is available now through amazon.com & for order through bookstores. In store distribution is pending a positive sales response through the Internet.

Most of all, I hope you enjoy the book.

Happy Holidays-
James Curcio.

A year past, a year to come

Looking back, this past year has been a blur. Most of this year, I was so focused on keeping the content flowing on Alterati that many days were immediately translated into articles. (You know- I don't have the memories, but I have the archive.)

Hopefully you enjoyed at least some of those articles. This coming year, my hope is to focus more of my efforts on Mythos Media, and Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning in particular. That may well mean another year of blur, trading another year of life for some books on people's shelves, but looking at all the things I could invest myself in, it seems the most meaningful. That is, supposing people actually read it.

That's always the big question mark, isn't it?

Well, I hope you give the book some of your time this coming year, and in return it gives you some new perspectives and experience. I will say unequivocally that the second edition is the best work of fiction I've created so far in my nearly thirty years on this strange planet.


(Fallen Nation status, by the way: the book has just passed acquisitions with the printer, which means that it will be up on Amazon in three weeks, give or take. If you would like to be added to the list for the email announcing its release, drop me a line at jamescurcioATgmailDOTcom.)

For this coming year, I also really hope to make some new friends, and strengthen the relatively few remaining bonds it seems I have. I'd like to not think that being committed to one's work requires the sacrifice of friendship or love- especially since what I do thrives so much on collaboration (even when collaboration occasionally demands dissent). There's little in life more important in life than friendship, unfortunately there are also fairly few capable of it.

Tonight, kundalini yoga, and acupressure if I can find a way to sneak in the time.



If you want to see some pictures from the year(s) past, my flickr page is finally getting updated... so there's many more pics there if you feel like wasting a couple minutes.

This week in links

These days it seems we communicate primarily in link dumps, and bizarre chain letters on facebook (disguised as virtual teddy bears BUT I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE)-

So here are some more. Make of them what you will:

"Underground cinema"

"Sushi"

Coffe bukakke man

Trashwagon

You're welcome.

The G-Spot 20

James Curcio interviews Sean Marsden about his electronic music ventures, topics include genre bending crunk, electro, and psytrance, Kenny G, opening up for Front242, hands-on audio production, and a whole lot more.

Jason Lubyk gives us a listen to his answering machine.

Wes Unruh plays Capital G (Unrest Remix) he mixed that remix.nin.com rejected, explains why it wasn't accepted, and breaks down the offending (and possibly offensive) samples.

Music in this episode includes:

The Elektrowerx tracks Gentle and Tracer.

233project's Anunaki, a song about the lizard astronaut men coming back down to reinslave us all.

Listen Now.

Dr Zoltan

Interview with Dr Zoltan




The anonymity of the Internet can allow people to "hide" behind false personas: most of us know about sock puppets, astroturfing, FBI agents posing as 12 year old girls. But, aside from Alternate Reality Gaming enthusiasts, many don't consider the artistic possibilities presented by this forum. You can take a stance, even extreme ones you wouldn't want to hold every day. You can create a face to make a point. Some people call it performance art, others will likely call it pretentious bullshit, and many others, baffled and confused as they are by most everything they encounter, will simply make a bunch of poorly conceived YouTube comments.

This is precisely what Dr. Zoltan Obelisk does. (That and play some truly sick "progressive" music.) Some may consider his stance extreme, egotistical, even infantile. Who knows, maybe they're right. There are times when the character of Zoltan strikes me as a pissed off, intellectual seventeen-year-old stuck in a thirty year old body. But along the way, he makes some really valid points about our society- especially the plastic and silicon world of Los Angeles. Hell, much as we'd like to deny it, the excessive posturing of intellectual seventeen year olds may be valid- maybe we do just grow complacent as we grow older.

This much I know for certain: the guy can count to thirteen.

(Read Alterati.com article.)

The G-Spot 19

Wes Unruh discusses DIY Gaming with Casey O'Donnell, a PhD candidate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It's part of an upcoming full length interview on what it actually takes to get a good video game developed and where the modding/homebrew community and the video game industry conflict with each other.

Jason Lubyk gives us an except from an interview he did with
"crackpot historian" Adam Gorightly in which they throw around some theories about the legendary Fortean creature the Mothman. (You can listen to the full two part interview here and here.)

And James Curcio introduces episode 19 discussing the band Dead Unicorn along with giving some background on where one of the SubQtaneous tracks came from and the process that went into recording it.

Music this episode:

I Told You So -Dead Unicorn

Panning for Gold in Rivers of Blood -SubQtaneous

The Difficulties of Leveling Up My Guy -Ikipr

I Don't Know (And Neither Do You.)

This is something that has bothered me the greater part of my life... so chances are writing a blog post about it isn't going to change much. But here goes.

Death and God share nearly the same epistemological quality. Put another way: people only demonstrate how full of shit they are when they speak of certain knowledge about either.

There is, by definition, no one alive who has any experience of death, (dying is another matter), and the same is true - by definition - of God.

This just goes another step to demonstrate that the entire history of the West is based on pompous arrogance; we can't help but share in it, since it's our heritage. The only exception to this are those rare individuals who recognize that the creed is only validated by its function. You don't need to have first-person experience of God for "do unto others as they would do unto you" to be (potentially) beneficial or meaningful. It's beneficial, or not, based on its practical application.

By that yardstick, let me tell you, I'm not putting Pascal's "smart money" on a Jainist God, that's for sure.

When it comes to "knowing God," or any transcendental experience, all I can say for certain is that the mirror can be tinted or warped any number of ways- that doesn't change the fact that the face staring back at you is your own.

Guess this is why I generally don't open my mouth about religion. I don't know - and neither do you.

The Gspot Episode 18

G-Spot Episode 18

James Curcio
gives us another podcast episode of
Postgenre Blues, this time talking about inadequate copyright laws, the media war, remixes and a Microsoft takedown notice sent to the Alterati.net crew.

Wes Unruh gives us a talking to about DIY television, the struggle against media monopoly, and converses on the subject with Freeman.

Joseph Matheny brings us another mini episode of the resurrected Gpod, digging in the archives with the Chicago
Underground Industrial Tape Scene.

And Jason Lubyk reads, channels aliens and fucks with your mind.

(Listen.)

-------------

Also On Alterati:
Blog:

A Conversation With Adam Gorightly - Jason Lubyk

In the first of this two part conversation with writer Adam Gorightly - author of The Prankster and the Conspiracy and Death Cults among other books - Jason talks with Adam about his trip to Conspiracy Convention 7, potential government infiltration of
conspiracy and paranormal groups and the curious life and origins of James Shelby Downard.

Unquiet Mind - Wes Unruh.

This is a continuation of a series he started three years ago.

The Reruns of Brisco County, jr. - Wes Unruh.

Gunslinger television show starring Bruce Campbell involving science fiction themes. With ongoing plot lines like a time-traveling madman bent on world domination and a mysterious orb that bestows superhuman powers, this show was much more than a flashy update of the Wild Wild West.

Ripple #6 - Ray Carney.

Ray Carney and Ari interview Alexis Marshall of Daughters about their album Hell Songs and touring across fucking Europe.

Altertube:

William S. Burroughs Nike Commercial.

The Three Trials.

Problems with Professor 105.

Torrents:

Richard M. Stallman gives a speech about copyright issues.

The Free Voice of Labour: The Jewish Anarchists.

2012 Timewave zero software - Terrence Mckenna and Peter Meyer.

Hunter S Thompson - Audio Books and Lectures.

Xenakis, Iannis (1922-2001)

Me I'm Not

Just finished a remix of the NIN song Me, I'm Not (NIN) with Nate Sampsel. This "remix" is about half new parts or seriously tweaked out synths. It'll be running in the upcoming Ripple Saul Williams interview, running on Alterati.com December 1st. Worth listening to, Saul had some really interesting things to say.

(Listen.)

And now for something completely different...

So, I'm sitting around musing to myself- videos on YouTuber will get 4,000 views, and 70 comments. And many of our Altertube videos will have the same number of views, and no comments. Now if those comments are as dumb as most YouTuber comments, I think that's a good thing, but it's interesting.

So as an example of this phenomenon I pull up this video. Which is something like spiritual, emotional, and moral ipecac.

We are all going to hell, etc.

Peter then kindly clued me into this video, which is the best worst thing I've seen in a long time. Wait for the chorus. Seriously.




If you're wondering. That apparently wasn't a one time outburst.


I've been editing the Alterati / Ripple interview with Saul Williams all night, I'm out.

Problems With The Professor Course 105

Good job on this one, T-dawg.

I'm gonna have to have Ovenfresh drop some knowledge on your ass one of these days.

(Problemology)

More sneak peeks.

There's a hell of a lot going on behind the scenes here.

Most of it I can't make public yet- but here's a taste. The 2nd edition Fallen Nation cover:







Expect the first episodes of the Fallen Nation theatrical audiobook, the website, and the 2nd edition on Amazon by the beginning of '08.