In The Blink Of A Pixel

Be sure to check in this weekend for what should be an interesting update on acupuncture as treatment for multiple sclerosis.


I can think of many reasons to avoid TeeVee like the plague.

Not only does it destroy the lives and minds of those who sit in front of it, it positively consumes the souls of those behind it.  Fame is a powerful drug and people will do anything for it.  The result is hollow people.  They are literally devoid of identity, empty shells filled only with the attention and adulation of others.

I have spent my life in mass media, first as a child model and political prop, later in the theatrical arts both on and off stage, and finally working in film and TeeVee.  I have seen how it eats people, and there, but for the grace of God, go I.

I spent some time working in Hollywood, watching people literally selling their souls for fame.  I was drawn down into a life of cocaine for breakfast and barbs to sleep.  When i wasn't working, I was partying, because that's what people do there.  I have met some of the glitteratti, and the experience scared me.  I woke up one day wondering what the hell I was doing, and the next morning I was hitch-hiking back to Houston.

During that time, I worked on about 27 films, including two of my own.  Yes, you've heard of them, kind of.  The concepts were stolen outright by major networks and I never received a dime.

I was working in evening news for a major network affiliate.  I was an editor and cameraman.  I would often receive assignments where I was told what angle the management wanted on the story, even before I got there to start shooting it.

I was sent to South Africa one time by a National network as a stringer (freelance cameraman).  I was supposed to gather footage of race riots.  In ten days, I never heard of one, much less saw one.  We did get a call one afternoon because some folks were yelling and throwing rocks at each other..  When we arrived, it turned out to be two black families fighting over a chicken, throwing sticks and rocks at each other across the street.  I rolled on it anyway.  Two days later, my footage was shown on National TeeVee as scenes of racial unrest in Transvaal.  I quit and never looked back.

I've done corporate and industrial media, toured with rock bands and even did a short stint with the circus.  Most of the memories are quite sad, really.  I met a lot of empty people making empty product for empty minds.  I created very effective marketing pieces for things I didn't believe in, and in some cases, actually was repulsed by.  I did my job, none-the-less.  I created hours of content for nationally syndicated shows, most of it utter bullshit.

Many of the people behind your TeeVee are really vacuous, vacant meat bags.  They have no ideas or sense of reality.  Everything they know is fake and fleeting.  They live for one thing, your attention.  And they are perfect tools for those who would eat your soul.

The people who control them, and us, are never seen or heard.  They are invisible decision-makers who know exactly what they are doing to us.  They are fully conscious and aware of the power they wield, and they know what they want from us: complete and total dependence.

One of the best films of all time, not just for its artistry and innovation, is Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane."  There is a lot of truth in it.  Though Welles swore up and down that it wasn't about Bill Hearst, it quite plainly is, as well as being autobiographical about its creator.  It is deeply critical of media, while at the same time being one of the masterpieces of it.  The decent of the main character into cynicism and pure contempt for the people who consumed the product, is not only a performance by a genius of the medium, but one of the most honest portrayals of the people behind the glitz.

The people behind the scenes despise us.  They see us as rubes to be taken for all we have.  They loathe us because they can dangle any amount of rubbish in front of us, and we make them filthy rich buying it up.  We just can't get enough.

They literally can make us do anything they want.

I have tried in various ways for years to make mass media a required subject in school.  There is nothing that affects more than media, and nothing we understand less.  Of course, with the state of education any more, we are lucky to know anything at all.

The average person really has no idea what they unleash into their homes and their minds when they turn on the TeeVee.  It is an art and a science, but it is also the highest form of magick.  It is literally true that we fall under a spell the minute we push the button.  I guarantee the one thing that would change the world is to turn off the TeeVee.

I also guarantee that turning off the TeeVee is probably the least likely thing that will happen in our lifetimes.

Admit it...we're hooked.
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In one of those weird little Universe jokes, Peter Fonda tells his grandkids to roll up their sleeves against Obama (we all know that's what 'bear arms' means, right?), and Dr. Paul Craig Robers comes out and says revolution is the only way out.  Now, Fonda's dad, the inestimable Henry Fonda starred in a great WWII flick called, "Mr. Roberts."  Coincidence?  We report.  You decide...