There’s a bunch new over at the site for NOTOCON VII today. I put up the speakers and presentations information. So, you can check out some of what’s going to happen over the conference. The formal schedule and vending aren’t up yet, so there’s more to come. But, there’s definitely several of the presentations I’m interested in, and a couple of those I won’t be able to go to … C’est la vie!
Also, even more importantly, registration is now open. There’s a couple of first-come, limited-capacity events that one can choose to attend as part of registration, but only one of them I can actually go to.
Still, it looks like there’s going to be quite a lot going on that will be interesting.
NOTOCON VII: the seventh biennial National Ordo Templi Orientis Conference August 7-9th, 2009 EV ~ Seattle, WA
Update 1jan09 @ 11:49pm:
There’s a post now over at the official NOTOCON VII Blog about registration being open. I think there’s going to be something posted to the blog about the speakers and presentations soon also.
"Not surprisingly, hundreds of letters for Mr. B. Virdot poured into general delivery in Canton — even though there was no person of that name in the city of 105,000. A week later, checks, most for as little as $5, started to arrive at homes around Canton. They were signed by 'B. Virdot.'"
"It is a powerful experience to see that things don’t have to be the way they are, that our societies and our lives can be arranged otherwise. This is one of the great gifts of seeing the world. "
"Participants won't know what city they're starting from until a couple of days before departure, and will only know a half-day in advance the next stop on their adventure, but they can count on visiting five or six countries in Western and Central Europe during the two-week trip."
“Enter Trock, or Timelord Rock. It’s all about Doctor Who, and it’s a lovely smashup of emo shoegazing and electronic zoom.”
“Following the community model of Wrock, Time Lord Rock invites interested Who heads of all skill levels to form bands and write songs celebrating the various characters, elements and incarnations of the Doctor Who series. The project seems to be off to a good start, with some 28 video responses and nearly a thousand comments attached to the initial Trock announcement video in just under a week.”
"CMRC is an educational institution for the independent study of Freemasonry and the traditions linked to it, and of mystical and esoteric traditions worldwide."
There was a posting about an 8-bit xmas album over at BoingBoing’s Offworld; which has been on and off-line a couple times already, is being hit pretty hard. That got me looking for more. While looking, I also discovered a couple electronica xmas collections in my library already. So, here’s the set:
I made a big update to the root NOTOCON ~ National Ordo Templi Orientis Conferences sited today. I’ve had this mostly ready for a while, but had some last minute changes to make, was waiting for the AIT site to be up, and needed final go-ahead. The update features archives of all previous NOTOCON sites for which a site existed. There are two stubs for the earliest NOTCON events, which I hope to fill in with more information as I collect it.
Also, I’ve started the cross-promotion of sites. So, this update includes links to both the new AIT and the already existing Kaaba sites. And, over at the new AIT site, I’ve added cross-promotion to NOTOCON and Kaaba in the sidebar.
"This page is devoted to the decoding of the ancient wisdoms of the game of Pai Sho, as seen in the world of Avatar: the last air bender. Please feel free to share any ideas or comments for this game. I've laid down some basic ideas, but nothing's really written in stone."
"It’s an educational game that's creative fun. An acting boardgame puts you and your teammates at center stage while improving public speaking and performance ability.
This fun story game lets you put together theatrical story elements taken from the game cards – a Character, a Challenge, a Friend or Foe, a Prop and a Setting – to create and act out a short, one to two minute storytelling presentation."
The cable went on the fritz twice in the last hour, both TV and Internet. So, I decided it was time to prepare the various candles I have around in case the power goes out too. Luckily I replenished some of my supply since the power down back in Olympia when my power went out for a week.
I bet tomorrow would be an awesome time to go cross-country skiing through town … or, maybe right now, actually.
Nothing quite like the day that Seattle completely shut down and my friend Scott, who was visiting and got stuck in town, and I went skating on our tennis shoes for over a mile down the middle of Broadway on Capitol Hill. We melted the treads off our shoes doing that, but it was totally worth it.
And, then we remembered that our old director from Lower Columbia College was visiting town too, so we snuck over to where his car was parked and made a snow phallus on the hood.
I suppose that finally gave away who was responsible for the huge ice phallus that was constructed in his drive way back in the day. When the morning arrived, the snow phallus has frozen solid and he ended up having to drive over his yard to get out … That huge phallus was made from mutilated snowmen. Another friend and I stalked the neighborhood looking for victims we could kidnap for material and transported the bodies on the hood of his car.
Ah, winter is fun!
I got to wear my wool soviet jacket and (fake) fur hat the other day. I got an average of one compliment a block I travelled. The street people were really complimentary, actually. But, people actually rolled down their car windows at intersections as I was walking by just to shout out, “Love your hat and jacket!”
Crazy thing wearing that costume is that I arrive dripping sweat and overheated. That freakin’ jacket weighs more than I do.
Back when I worked for the Russians in Seattle, I wore that costume to work one day. Their various reactions were quite interesting. One laughed. One seemed to have a little tear in his eye.
When I was walking around the other day wearing that I found myself thinking about all the Russians around the area. I wonder if, for the dear little babushkas and others, seeing Soviet-era costume is a little like a Nazi costume would be for European Jews? I started to feel a little self-conscious about wearing the costume, but the constant compliments made me feel a bit easier. (But, not totally …)
This post title is inspired by the various hilarious names that people have been giving to this winter storm and Amy Denio’s “Apocalypso” from Birthing Chair Blues. It’s the Snowpocalypse, the Snowmageddon Arctic Death Blast of the 2008 Snowlocaust … Let’s all dance the Snowpocalypso!
How do you say Global Climate Chaos? Welcome to the dress rehearsal!
"KRISTEN STEWART
I want you to make me a vampire so that I can be with you, even if it means sacrificing my own life as a mortal.
ROBERT PATTINSON
So, the next generation of young women are currently flocking to see a female lead starring in a movie by a female director based on a bestselling book by a female author, and in this movie the main character wants to become completely submissive and self-sacrificing for a male."
"8bc.org is the first completely open chiptune-related media repository and file sharing community. Anyone can upload their chiptune related media completely free of charge even if you aren't a member."
“The actual birthday of Jesus was forgotten by the early Christian movement. in those days, various groups celebrated his birth on JAN-6, APR-21 and MAY-1. By the 4th century, the church selected the approximate time of the winter solstice as the date to recognize Jesus’ birth. They picked up this date from Pagan sources. As luck would have it, the autumn equinox might have been a more accurate choice.”
“If Christianity was somehow stopped at its birth, [the] whole world would be following Mithraism today.”
“Advanced Initiator Training is dedicated to providing active initiators with resources to grow in their skill, professionalism and education as initiators and to help active O.T.O. initiates increase their knowledge and skill in regards to our initiation rituals.”
Registration for AIT 1 is now also open for those that can attend.
The site design is supposed to look very much like the site for the Kaaba Colloquium: Thelemic Leadership Seminar, but this site is much less back-end heavy and has some other small changes.
Eventually, I hope to have cross-promotion between AIT, NOTOCON and maybe even Kaaba. These various O.T.O. events are all examples of a desire for excellence.
"We are a volunteer group of Portlanders who believe that 802.11 (wireless networking, or Wi-Fi) technology is both cool and empowering. We started, in 2000, by turning our own houses and apartments into wireless hotspots (also referred to as 'nodes'), and then set about building these nodes in public locations such as parks and coffee shops. Currently we have over 100 active nodes, and we eventually would like to cover the entire city of Portland, Oregon with even more."
"What do neural Buddhists, individualist spiritualities, cultural wars over science and religion and creationism and evolution, a nature-hating technology, the violence of extreme religious belief, and potentially omniscient government surveillance all have in common? They were all core elements in the life and work of the literary prophet Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)."
"He was watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang. Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang 'singularity', the universe bounced and started expanding again. What on earth was happening?"
"Terror Texts is a new musical using six ancient Israelite stories verbatim from the Bible. The idea was conceived by Northwestern College Professor Jeff Barker with industrial rock songs by Minneapolis composer Joseph Barker and choral music by Heather Josselyn-Cranson.
Professor Barker chose six of the most vile, gory, and disturbing stories. He believes that they have been overlooked in public conversation but argues that their meaning and power are revealed when they are restored to performance. Barker agrees with Hebrew professor Dr. Tom Boogaart (see Touching the Altar) that these ancient stories were born in an oral culture and find their natural home on the stage."
"On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and 'to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.'"
"But as the number of ambitious bars has proliferated, so have their ways of doing things. Interviews with dozens of bartenders around the country suggest that the cocktail movement is becoming so diverse and sophisticated that it encompasses several distinct approaches and philosophies."
"It really says something about a game when I can, literally, run around for large periods of time only swinging the camera around my main character and just letting the beauty of the in-game visuals seep into my mind."
"Card-carrying buddhist. Recovered existentialist. Lifelong leftier-than-thou Democrat. Two baby steps and one umbrella step to the immediate right of Arthur Silber. (That's how left, mmkay?) Humorless lipstick feminist. Clintonista Obamist."
""I take walks frequently — the same walks every weekend — and all of a sudden I'm doing stupid things, just laughing at myself because I'm walking ten more feet to the left this time, or turning down this different street, or walking down the opposite side of the road. Even though I'm going down the same street, I'm on a different side now, facing a different direction. It's so funny how much more I do actually see.""
