Weird Studies/Trash Stratum

25 Aug 2022 09:56 - 26 Oct 2022 08:24
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    • This is one of those key ideas in WS, they refer back to it all the time.
    • PKD of course, his beer-can-in-the-gutter image. The essence of Christianity, or at least his brand. "The stone that the builders refused".
    • The pragmatics of the trash stratum. It is what is ignored or scorned or repressed by the mainstream, so there is wisdom to be gained by studying it, secret knowledge.
    • Enantiodromia. The nature of Malkuth in Kabbala/Tarot (matter may be the lowest of the low, but it gives rise to the highest). Crowley uses philanthropy as an example. PKD career another.
    • Two flavors of gnosticism: monism, where the material world is redeemed, you just have to see through it properly, and the other kind, where it is an evil imprisoning force maintained by an evil spirit (the demiurge) that you must escape from (more Manichean).
    • A great Ligotti quote. His stories have this contraption-like quality (also found in Kafka and Borges )
    • The Alchemy of Trash - Techgnosis | Techgnosis Erik Davis
      • Los Angeles grew into a kind of theme park of the soul, a carnival of transcendence offering esoteric sources of entertainment, transport, and commodified wonder...There is a gnawing absurdity at the heart of this mystic carnival, this tacky tinseltown of snakeoil simulacra
    • Related to the SubGenius concept of bulldada.
      • WHAT IS BULLDADA? What is not? Bulldada is the nearly unexplainable label for that mysterious quality that impregnates ordinary things with meaning for the SubGenius no matter how devoid of value they may appear to The Others. Seeing in the vivisecting light of bulldada, we recognize that the most awe-inspiring artifacts of our civilization are not the revered artsy-fartsy pieces of "culture" displayed in our swankest art museums, universities and concert halls - as the Conspiracy would have us believe! - but are instead to be found in such icons as low-budget exploitation movies, lurid comic books, all-nite TV, sleazy Paperbacks of the Gods, certain bizarre billboards and pulp magazine ads, and literally any other fossil of raw humanity in all its shit-kickingly flawwed glory. Bulldada shows us that cheesiness tells the Truth and gives good Slack whereas status-mongered slickness is merely a sheen of sham value dangled as bait for the hungry dollars of the idiot bourgeois. The SubGenius is not interested in dignified "Learning" or even science fiction - no, what he craves is greasy SCI-FI.
    • Part 2 Weird Studies Episode 21: The Trash Stratum - Part 2
      • Different forms of irony. Commitment vs perspectivalism Notes from Underground as a portrait of toxic reflexivity.
      • A ref to Finite and Infinite Games, always nice. The bit was about how the function of art galleries is to protect us from art.
      • Some contempt for the cheap superiority-inflected irony of MST3000 and the like. OK.
      • "WS is partly about trying to define a space outside of modernity, but the attemtpt to escape modernity is the most modern thing ever" (paraphrased) – that made my ears go up because I said almost the exact same thing to one of my reactionary frenemies the other day.
      • Art as anarchy, escaping the efforts of classifiers and regulators
      • Borges The Approach to al-Mu'tasim