What happened when the hippies took over.
Monday, January 10th, 2005 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanCAVEAT: this post is in response to the challenge set originally by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pax_draconis. The contents of this essay do not necessarily represent my own views, current scientific thinking or indeed anything other that the fantasies of Interwebscience. Original terms and conditions here
The human mind is a wonderful thing; despite occasional evidence to the contrary. It, like nature, abhors a vacuum. To that end, the mind, individual or collective, creates patterns and linkages, often where none exist.
Next time you're watching Gene Kelly bounce around like a loon in the opening number of Singing in the Rain, take a look at the backdrop - Grauman's Chinese Theatre, billed in reality, as 'the most famous movie theatre in the world'. This is the place where Cecil B DeMille debuted his 1927 classic, King of Kings, the story of Christ, and many other movies have been premiered there in the years since. If you haven't heard of the theatre, odds are you have heard of the footpath outside where the Hollywood elite, such as Tim Burton leave their hand and footprints in the wet cement.
There is a certain irony that the theatre should be featured in a movie downpour, since such weather seldom occurs in that part of the world. Los Angeles built as it is, in a desert.
But such incongruity is not unusual in California, a State regarded even by most Americans as just plain weird. Maybe it's the heat combined with a work ethic carefully hidden behind an outwardly relaxed lifestyle that is to blame, but the open-mindedness, weird or not, seasoned with just a hint of post-Cold War paranoia, is often what makes Hollywood gold. So, the location influences the way of life, which feeds the ideas, and these in turn, breed movies, which recycle and reinforce the attitudes further.
It is this willingness to accept the odd and outright strange that provides Hollywood with its imaginative muscle (even if oft times it is left to whither). Such good, old-fashioned paranoia, allied with the mighty dollar and the movie/media industry thrives in a land where the Beautiful People of the sixties' Haight-Ashbury have grown up and pull the levers of power.
The 'tune in, drop out' generation were the first to feel betrayed by the 'establishment' in the post-Kennedy era, and consequently can spot a conspiracy from miles off. People will believe what they want to believe, and frequently evidence to the contrary is merely evidence of a cover up. These things are recursive. One man's Angel Hair is the very thin spaghetti he ate with harlequin shrimp* at a ludicrously expensive restaurant; for others it's a phenomenon which they claim to be extraterrestrial, long, slimy filaments that fall to earth from 'cosmic vapour trails'. Or it could just be a yarn idly spun by people with nothing better to do.
Speaking of yarns, there are, for example, many who believe HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) in Alaska is to blame for many strange phenomena. These cover the gambit from changing air ionization to affect and alter the moods of the population, to bouncing signals off the Moon, to creating devastating weapons.
And to illustrate the assertion that the ideas feed off each other, that idea formed the basis of an entire X-Files episode, whilst the wider precept of 'mind control' has provided such a rich seam of invention that it is yet to be fully mined.
Of course, the good people at HAARP are rightfully scandalised by the things conspiracy theorists like to say about them, and how this feeds the sensationalism of the media. The fact that the project is completely unclassified in no way inhibits the imaginations of conspiracy-lovers.
HAARP sometimes gets the blame for that, too.
Sometimes, even the greatest cynic can find himself wondering if there might not, after all, be a guiding hand behind all that happens in the world and beyond. The sheer serendipity of finding connections within connections, and coincidence upon coincidence tickles the superstitious side of us all; no matter how hard we try to pretend otherwise. It is all a cosmic joke.
Or maybe the mind controls lasers really do exist. Though we shouldn't HAARP on about it.
*harlequin shrimp is a recipe for cooked shrimp, involving green and red peppers (and black pepper), extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, chives and dill. It is most definitely not painted shrimp which, confusingly, is also known as the harlequin shrimp, but is inedible. Incidentally, the latter eats 'crown of thorns' star fish, which brings us neatly back to Cecil B DeMille.
Connecting that bloody shrimp nearly did for me.
pax_draconis. The contents of this essay do not necessarily represent my own views, current scientific thinking or indeed anything other that the fantasies of Interwebscience. Original terms and conditions hereThe human mind is a wonderful thing; despite occasional evidence to the contrary. It, like nature, abhors a vacuum. To that end, the mind, individual or collective, creates patterns and linkages, often where none exist.
Next time you're watching Gene Kelly bounce around like a loon in the opening number of Singing in the Rain, take a look at the backdrop - Grauman's Chinese Theatre, billed in reality, as 'the most famous movie theatre in the world'. This is the place where Cecil B DeMille debuted his 1927 classic, King of Kings, the story of Christ, and many other movies have been premiered there in the years since. If you haven't heard of the theatre, odds are you have heard of the footpath outside where the Hollywood elite, such as Tim Burton leave their hand and footprints in the wet cement.
There is a certain irony that the theatre should be featured in a movie downpour, since such weather seldom occurs in that part of the world. Los Angeles built as it is, in a desert.
But such incongruity is not unusual in California, a State regarded even by most Americans as just plain weird. Maybe it's the heat combined with a work ethic carefully hidden behind an outwardly relaxed lifestyle that is to blame, but the open-mindedness, weird or not, seasoned with just a hint of post-Cold War paranoia, is often what makes Hollywood gold. So, the location influences the way of life, which feeds the ideas, and these in turn, breed movies, which recycle and reinforce the attitudes further.
It is this willingness to accept the odd and outright strange that provides Hollywood with its imaginative muscle (even if oft times it is left to whither). Such good, old-fashioned paranoia, allied with the mighty dollar and the movie/media industry thrives in a land where the Beautiful People of the sixties' Haight-Ashbury have grown up and pull the levers of power.
The 'tune in, drop out' generation were the first to feel betrayed by the 'establishment' in the post-Kennedy era, and consequently can spot a conspiracy from miles off. People will believe what they want to believe, and frequently evidence to the contrary is merely evidence of a cover up. These things are recursive. One man's Angel Hair is the very thin spaghetti he ate with harlequin shrimp* at a ludicrously expensive restaurant; for others it's a phenomenon which they claim to be extraterrestrial, long, slimy filaments that fall to earth from 'cosmic vapour trails'. Or it could just be a yarn idly spun by people with nothing better to do.
Speaking of yarns, there are, for example, many who believe HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) in Alaska is to blame for many strange phenomena. These cover the gambit from changing air ionization to affect and alter the moods of the population, to bouncing signals off the Moon, to creating devastating weapons.
And to illustrate the assertion that the ideas feed off each other, that idea formed the basis of an entire X-Files episode, whilst the wider precept of 'mind control' has provided such a rich seam of invention that it is yet to be fully mined.
Of course, the good people at HAARP are rightfully scandalised by the things conspiracy theorists like to say about them, and how this feeds the sensationalism of the media. The fact that the project is completely unclassified in no way inhibits the imaginations of conspiracy-lovers.
HAARP sometimes gets the blame for that, too.
Sometimes, even the greatest cynic can find himself wondering if there might not, after all, be a guiding hand behind all that happens in the world and beyond. The sheer serendipity of finding connections within connections, and coincidence upon coincidence tickles the superstitious side of us all; no matter how hard we try to pretend otherwise. It is all a cosmic joke.
Or maybe the mind controls lasers really do exist. Though we shouldn't HAARP on about it.
*harlequin shrimp is a recipe for cooked shrimp, involving green and red peppers (and black pepper), extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, chives and dill. It is most definitely not painted shrimp which, confusingly, is also known as the harlequin shrimp, but is inedible. Incidentally, the latter eats 'crown of thorns' star fish, which brings us neatly back to Cecil B DeMille.
Connecting that bloody shrimp nearly did for me.