Category Archives: …and other stuff

miscellaneous postings by Lawrence R. Spencer

...and other stuff, ART, INSIDE THE BOOK, MOVING PICTURES, SOUNDS, UNIVERSES

THE FUTURE THAT NEVER WAS

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Here’s the retro-futuristic trailer by the brilliant graphic artist Bradley W. Schenck: “Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual”. The Thrilling Tales web site hosts lightly interactive, densely illustrated stories from Retropolis – the world of the Future That Never Was. The stories can be viewed in their entirety on the web site (with a few nifty web-only features) for free – but they can also be purchased as full color printed books that you can read on the porch, or in the passenger seat (please!) of your flying car.

The first story to appear on the Thrilling Tales web site is “Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves” – Part one of “The Toaster With TWO BRAINS”.

SEE IT HERE: http://thrilling-tales.webomator.com/

 

 

 

THIS SITE HAS EARNED THE OFFICIAL SEAL OF APPROVAL FROM

THE ORDER OF OMEGA TIME TRAVEL CULT

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, INSIDE THE BOOK, MOVING PICTURES, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

AYN RAND INTERVIEW

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Many videotapes of Johnny Carson’s 1960s episodes were lost in the fire of NBC’s archives, but at least part of Ayn Rand’s first appearance on The Tonight Show (she was on three times over the years, clearly Carson was a fan) has survived and has been posted on YouTube. Apparently, Carson snubbed his other guests that evening and kept Rand on for the entire 90 minute show. Topics include Objectivism, rationality, raising children, religion, the military draft and the Vietnam War. (via Dangerous Minds)

 

Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, February 2 1905 – March 6, 1982) was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher,playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.

Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two early novels that were initially less successful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.

Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed all forms of collectivism and statism, instead supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she believed was the only social system that protected individual rights. She promoted romantic realism in art. She was sharply critical of the philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her besides Aristotle.

Rand’s fiction was poorly received by many literary critics, and academia generally ignored or rejected her philosophy. The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.She is a major influence among libertarians and American conservatives. (Wikipedia.org)

...and other stuff, FREE ADVICE, INSIDE THE BOOK, LIVES, READING MATTER, SHERLOCK HOLMES, SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, UNIVERSES

PARASITICAL INSANITY

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“Count Dracula, and his kindred spirits, may be considered to be “evil” from the point of view of mankind.  However, apart from the prejudice of the human victims who do not desire to serve as food for others who drink their blood, the vampire can not be considered to be anything other than an immortal spiritual being, attempting to persist and survive in a quasi-corporeal form.

I esteem that there is only one principle difference between a human being who eats a roasted chicken or pork or beef, and a vampire who drinks the living blood of a human being.  That is, that the vampire, by consuming the living blood, derives a more sustainable form of energy than the man who eats the dead flesh of an animal.

The man who eats dead meat lives 65 years, his own spirit is confined inside a fragile piece of flesh, with little or no self-awareness regarding his potential capabilities as a spiritual entity. Whereas, the vampire, consuming only the living blood of its victim, maintains an extreme spiritual power and ability, as well as physical strength and longevity which borders upon immortality!

Who is to say which condition is more or less desirable? There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!

Yet, it is entirely understandable that men do not trouble themselves with grotesque speculations as to the nature of life beyond the grave.  They have enough to do in this world. Life is a beautiful thing. The man who appreciates its beauties enjoys a sufficient understanding of life without dabbling in religions or spiritualism.

Religion is a fraud which have been exposed a hundred times and yet priests continue to find fresh crowds of foolish devotees whose insane credulity and superstitious prejudice make them impervious to all rational arguments.  One can only leave them to seek destinations of their singular Fates, which they have been predetermined for them.

Unless we practice eternal vigilance against these vampires, we will continue to be afflicted and effected by the contagion of their parasitical insanity.  The vitality of every civilization which has crumbled into disrepair and dust was drained of life by these diabolical beings!”

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— Excerpt from SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, by Lawrence R. Spencer