Mythinformation

2011-03-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

Bored with Obama Drama? I am.

I don't think he's all that interested in party lines. He had me at "all hands on deck" ... You?

These cats and kittens who say the world might be a better place if he weren't putting his best years and family on the line each day need to stop trying to campaign for something they will surely do no better job of, if elected, themselves.

Is he keeping his campaign promises? Who knows?

He was looking at a completely different world in 2007-2008. And so are you.

One thing I do know is none of these candidates really realize what they are running for is World Leader Pretend

You don't think Hilary isn't freakin' about the leakin' ... do you?

I support the Wikileaks effort as a planetary citizen, but for my nationalist leanings, barbaric as they might be, well, you'd be hard-pressed to find an authoritative Democrat in Congress with access to national security directives who won't feel the same way.

This is a nation at war, after all. For example, we got our asses kicked by BP in a chemical attack ... then the corporate internationalists started to zero in for the kill ... and if you haven't happened to notice, there's a string of awkw...ardly self-inflicted historical creation myth demigods basically stretching across areas just to the north of the Equator, from South America to Pakistan, who have drawn their lines against the West ... Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... all sides of my so-called family can barely speak to each other due to the civil war of disunion raging in our subdividing minds ...

Who's a Republican? Who's a real Democrat?

WTF!

Is there anything I need to vote on today!

‎... And Ronald Reagan.

We just had a guy from the CIA go on The Colbert Show and tell us our national policy across the planet is to blame for 9/11 ... and I think we all knew that ... after four decades of Plutocratic zeal and shadowy lies and deception ... Obama only looks like a Republican now to some because the center is maybe, just maybe, a kind of Goldwater-era conservatism.

Which is why we have no idea which way each tea partier will swing, from one day to the next. Libertarians will always be a mixed bag of nuts, anyway.

We danced away the 1980s to the tune of religious hypocrisy and political fakery, with the youth culture, and only the youth culture, seeming to be moving with enough mass-media savvy, to pick up on the restoration of an alternative, via the agitprop bands from U2 to Pearl Jam, but was it enough?

But look now: If you drew a line slightly curved across the planet from Venezuela, slightly turning downward, then heading back up toward North Korea, with China grinning in the middle, you would have a Smiley Face with very big teeth.

We ffffeeed up bad after World War II, real bad. We blew it before we were even born, you and I and many of us, right down the unsuspecting river.

We sold our farms. Then our grandparents went out and spent their winnings on fast cars, fast food, supported a methane dispensing meat industry to feed that demon, guns and tanks and missiles galore, to make sure we could gobble it all up, falling prey to the only winners who can afford taxes anymore, the oil companies and floating digital seas of international money storms called banks, all made fidgety by a tactile-neurotic e-trade sell-out, time- is-money mentality open to everyone with a electricity greedy little hand-held device, then traded our heritage for the empire dreams of Skull & Crossbones types for four decades, exploding our national surplus on a fireworks display in the Mideast, paying off handsomely for Haliburton this and Blackwater that, with pallets of cash guarded by under-supported National Guard kids driving Hummers down the unsafe narrow streets of Baghdad ... only to phock up the entire food chain and earthly delight called, interestingly, weather ... while that situation remains, deathly so, on the back burner.

Why won't these Republicans declare to get in a race to beat a guy who, from all appearances, is able to handle this crap. I can't imagine how they might want all of the drama? Can you?

The cult of personality is partially to blame.

Let's go to the movies. Let's talk about heroes.

Since I was old enough to visualize a screen, I have been absorbing stories about Lone Gunmen. They are the types of heroes who, like Robin Hood, attempt to defeat pure evil by themselves.

They are rebels without causes. They are Zoros, marked. They are Lone Rangers. Sometimes they have sidekicks. Tontoes. Robbins. Robots for Will Robinsons. They are Btuch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They are Bonnie and Clyde.

And guess what, they all fought the law, and the law wins. Or, at least, next week's episode is needed to resolve the inherent issues of battling pure evil. Or, at least, a sequel is necessary.

The fact is, two people can't do it alone. One won't, obviously. Too many fuckheads. Too many minions of hell. They have been way too organized for way too long and, basically, too many people, also minions of hell, find it way to profitable to keep it that way.

Go to "Democracy in America," by Alexis DeTocqueville, who observes that the best way to dissassemble any opposition to the forces of tyranny and overeaching authority is to divide and conquer. This was before most labor unions in the U.S. came about. Before the revolutions, more evolved than those of the 18th and 19th centuries, came about.

But today we see whole sweeps of people, connected via technologies for communications sweeping away whole seemingly intractable regimes within a few years, months, days. Hour by hour.

How do you recognize the pudding heads, then? Well, follow the money. That always helps. But also check into this: Who is trying to split up the opposition with shadow games, deception? Also, who isn't being heard from, although they seem to be responsible (such as Dick Cheney during the BP oil spill fiasco). The rat will always go into hiding when confronted with someone who wants to speak truth to power.

How else? God knows, doesn't care. We decide. We. Decide. Nobody else around, really. It's plain as this: All hands on deck! Sink, or swim. We may not be able to save the world, but we can save each other.

Blog Shred Dot Calm: Advocate Interactive News

2011-03-04T17:52:00.000-08:00

Blog Shred Dot Calm: Advocate Interactive News: "The Week's Weirdest News from Advocate Interactive ... http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Advocate-Interactive/195740630443866"

Lessons in Social Dysfunctions: What's Wrong with These Politicians? Are They Completely Insane?

2011-02-25T04:17:00.000-08:00

Should we de-fund congressional health care? Would we get better representation if they weren't living on the Cadillac Plan of life?

Perhaps so. Maybe then they can start out by paying for their own mental health care out of pocket. Because, quite obviously, on all sides of the aisle, they have gone completely berserk.

The members of Congress need to know what the street actually feels like beneath their shoes, what it's like to be human and not flown around in Lear jets, what 99.9 percent of the population has to deal with when they play political shadow games with our lives.

Many of the most powerful of these people have been playing shadow games for so long, they have forgotten how shadows are actually made.

That's why, when now cast in the eviscerating light of truth, they look so implausibly ridiculous. And no, they aren't tricking anybody by only leading us to think that way.

They really are just that lost in centuries within centuries of shadow games.

Justice may be a human conceit, but every now and then you see something to make you think humans may be on to something good ... But you won't see it from Congress until they figure out what it's actually like to be a human being again.

It's worth a try. Hell, just about anything else but the conditions Americans are living under, due to the political situation, is worth a try. Throw the dice. Destroy the code, or, at least, set it free to the people. I have a feeling that in this century, good fortune will follow if we have the right motives. Luck is the residue of design. If you can tell me who said that, I will sign your post with my exclusive digital signature at no cost to you, the consumer ...

My name is definitely not Ronald Reagan and I approved this message ...

~

Artwork above by Jasper Johns, recent winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Books on Demand

2010-04-08T13:05:00.001-07:00

Mythville

2010-03-31T09:23:00.001-07:00

Mythville

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Bards of Mythville | Phoenix, AZ | Alternative / alt-country / post-punk topical techno poesy | Music, Lyrics, Songs, and Videos | ReverbNation

2010-03-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Bards of Mythville | Phoenix, AZ | Alternative / alt-country / post-punk topical techno poesy | Music, Lyrics, Songs, and Videos | ReverbNation

Bards of Mythville official page ...

Mythville (Douglas McDaniel) | MySpace

2010-03-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

Mythville at MySpace

'Capitalism' Foiled, Again: Hollywood Video becomes new Last Picture Show

2010-03-13T03:05:00.000-08:00

Doing everything I could do to stay on top of the new angst by renting Michael Moore's new DVD, "Capitalism: A Love Story," I rushed down to Hollywood Video at the strip mall near my home in north Phoenix, only to find a new bulldozer-of-a-gal working at the counter. She was on the phone, apparently unimpressed there were customers standing in line. This seemed strange, considering even the most common standards for customer service in America. But she was at work, apparently, performing another completely over the counter action: She was preparing the gateway to closing the video store down.

In addition to this, agony of agonies, the store at Cave Creek and Union Hills, a key unit in the marvel of suburban convenience for many years now, in terms of being the so-called local picture show, had decided to choose the week after Oscar week to stop ordering new films.

So Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: a Love Story," was not on the shelves. Nor were many of the movies that had just been celebrated as international shake-yer-moneymakers. Certainly, a lost opportunity for Hollywood Video.

Nevertheless, the woman at the counter was no longer engaged in the act of building a business, yes, even community that day. The place was going out of commission in a month or more or so. Like that famous old title, "The Last Picture Show," the Hollywood Video store was about to become a vacated retail space in brown-beige land. Despite having entered the social contract of actually being one of the key cogs for a fairly cohesive strip mall landscape, Hollywood is pulling out now, to make the place look like another post-retail wreck in Phoenix.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the local community library closed down due to budget restraints for Maricopa County. Indeed, the mere act of tacticle browsing of actual media bits seemed to be drying in the sun. The corporations are pulling out, and especially on the media side, drying out. The fascist architecture, as Bruce Cockburn might put it, is turning to ruins. And just as Moore's film might describe (I later rented the DVD at a Red Box, which offered absolutely no opinion on the film as I paid for it, something I'm really starting to miss), Phoenix is becoming, literally, another Flint, Mich.

All over the Valley, where such corporations as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video had convinced everyone that pasting their little stores all over the compromised plain would be good for everyone, their windows are going blank. They entered into the social contract, so to speak, to entertain everyone that way. But now that Goldmund Sacks and the Bush boys have sucked the middle class dry, as Moore pretty much illustrates in his shockingly sad satire and documentary, the corporate nation-state is disolving as well as each jauntily painted little plastic consumer hut goes dark.

More bad news for anyone on the wrong side of the digital divide, I suppose, but one wonders what's to become of the suburbs as such media hubs as Borders Books and Music and Barnes & Noble continue to crash and burn, leaving empty big box shells across the land .. like a bunch of dead locust husks, it seems to me.

At any rate, believe Moore's "Love Story." His timing of events, how George Bush ended his regime by allowing the banking industry to raid the treasury in a moment of panic before the election of 2008, rings true. As far as the end of the love story with "Hollywood Video," feels more like a break up to me.

Mythville MetaMedia - Lulu.com

2010-03-13T02:49:00.000-08:00

Take the road to Mythville ...
Mythville MetaMedia - Lulu.com

Kindle This: Decade long e-book quest is print-on-demand cautionary tale

2010-02-26T08:21:00.000-08:00

Kindle This: Decade long e-book quest is print-on-demand cautionary tale

Get the latest book by Douglas McDaniel

2009-03-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

From Outside the Walls of the DNC

2008-07-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

FLASH BACK to '68? An anti-war protest in London, circa 2002,
asks the musical question, if someone had only listened then,
there'd be nobody listening in now ...

What's So Great About Recreating '68?
Dirty hippies for a new day? Nope, just some folks who were actually paying attention ...

“Riot, n., a popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.”
-- Ambrose Bierce, the Devil’s Dictionary

Just listening to a few lines of conversation from a recent meeting at Capitol Hill’s Gypsy House Café made it as clear as the view of the nearby gold dome could be easily found around the corner, if you cared to walk, that is, or of beautiful downtown Denver, all to be dressed up very soon like a $50 million red, white and especially blue bag of chips — or, if you prefer, the view of the nearby head shop: Re-Create 68 defies definition. Pin down Re-Create 68’s purpose? Try pinning down smoke.
Surely it’s not an organization. Not when its whole raison d’etre is to question authority, which pretty much precludes the act of organizing. Nor, for that matter, can it be defined as a lobbying group, considering that each member seems to have a different idea of what message it’s trying to convey. That is especially frustrating for those among us, especially in the media, who seek easy answers in order to write headlines.
Especially big headlines. Such as “Denver to Riot! See you there!”
Perhaps it could be at least loosely defined as a production company to encourage performance art. The meetings due seem to be, to the great disappointment of those headline writers, and the denizens of the outward blogosphere, more ready to cast protest in the light of a festivarian glee. To those in the middle, stuck in their easy chairs, watching all, clucking their tongues, its members seem to have some sort of common goal that involves getting people to drop out of their 21st century lives in order to come to Denver during the Democratic National Convention and replicate the turbulent druggy-leftist-protest-music-inspired lifestyle practiced 40 years ago.
But really, it’s just a bunch of people who, rather than rushing home to water their lawns or preen in their SUVS in the suburbs ... just not-so-plain folks, controvertionaries, who were actually paying attention.
“Re-create 68 is just a bunch of groups together and individuals. I didn't start it, nor am I a member,” said one of its meeting-goers, Jill Dreier, who is an organizer for the Visualized Film Festival in Denver. “I organize a film festival and used to be part of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace ... so from those groups, I know a lot of people, including the R-68 folks.”
Perhaps the Gypsy House Café itself offers some clues. Women in hints of gypsy garb, most of it slummed out to the basic tune of what you can now get pretty freely in the resale shops up and down Colfax Avenue, with perhaps a piece of two purchased at the nearby Cherry Creek Mall ... just maybe, maybe ... men in bleak-chic anarchistic looking black T-shirts, short-cropped hair, soccer moms and men in ponytails mix amiably as sitar music plays and members of the Denver Police Department stroll by, unobtrusively taking photographs.
Hey, where’s the tie-dye? What? No one calls anyone a “pig?” Where are the familiar boundaries we can trust, the old division, the division between “us” and “them.” Where are the assurances that this is just some kind of cliche. And that, at least, the re-appearance of its rough beast to serve as notice that, like it or not, ’68 is back in Denver, perhaps bigger than ever: With CSN without Y coming to town to surely sign about the paranoia in "Almost Cut My Hair."
During their orderly meetings in the café’s basement, the group’s core, er, “people,” have sought to reignite the antiwar ethos of 1968, organizing events for a “mass mobilization” during the convention. There is no rabble, maybe a ramble of two. But if you really want a rabble, go cover the San Miguel County Commissioners in the high-priced echelons of Telluride for some real gripe and grinners. They seem to be about as radical as the Town Council there.
Anyone seeking a clearer definition might consider visiting the group’s Web site, www.recreate68.org. There, one can learn that Re-Create 68 represents “the grassroots movement opposed to the two-party system,” is a “convergence center for the antiwar movement” and has an agenda that includes everything left-leaning, from fighting poverty to bringing the troops back home. Environmentalism, too, but there’s still actually some faith in politics here.
Maybe you can turn the Titanic around in four years, eight, tops?
Among many, however, Re-Create 68 has become the hobgobblin of dysturbian anxiety.
As a result, the Re-Create 68 people have spent a lot of time lately trying to deal with dissent within their own loose-knit ranks as other liberal groups and activist organizations reject whatever it is that Re-create 68 stands for. That is to say, what the media says they stand for. The scary thing they have to say. The quick thing easy to rail against before you click off Uncle Bill to catch up on some reality TV in order to get a load off and feel better.
All politics is local, ‘tis said. This is no different. Earlier last month, eight left-leaning groups — the American Friends Service Committee, Code Pink, Colorado Street Medics, the Green Party, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Students for Peace and Justice and United for Peace and Justice — announced they were splitting with Re-create 68 and forming a new coalition, the Alliance for Real Democracy. Such is the business of politics: gyres winding in and out.
Re-create 68 co-founder Glenn Spagnuolo said it’s strange for groups to resign, considering that there’s no membership. It’s like going on Facebook.com and quitting one of many groups, such as the Rolling Stones network, to give the appearance you once played for the actual band, but, now have some new tunes to play. The participation from the other groups, he said, has been limited to dropping in on Re-create 68’s open gatherings, which usually draw about 20 or 30 people. For example, members of the Green Party came in a few times, then left, never really got involved.
But then came heap big headlines, assuring stuff to say, hell yeah, the center can hold. But, as far as it goes with the Green Party, or this other rainbow coalition of orgs, mostly driven by pushing for people to come from the outside toward Denver: “They were never part of Re-create 68,” Spagnuolo said. “Their groups reach a different audience than us. There are just multiple coalitions reaching different groups. We think that’s great.”
Green Party chair Claire Ryder, speaking for herself rather than on behalf of the Green Party, said that after attending several meetings she’d decided to stop going because she didn’t feel the group allowed everyone to be heard.
“I didn’t agree with the way they organize, and the name was chosen before anybody got a chance to participate,” she said. “It’s run by three people.”
Again, county commissioner boards come to mind: But it’s really not that simple.
Ryder also said she didn’t care for the way the group’s activities have been characterized in the media. Who would, if you were inside, looking out? Now the members of Recreate ‘68 have to put themselves through the rigors of “talking to the media” training sessions in order to keep from further fanning these so-called fire of Orc being pushed down by ol' William Blake's authoritarian foe, Urizen.
“The conflict is what the story is about now,” she said. “The big thing is the violent or nonviolent thing. It has been reported in the press that way. I don’t want to be a part of that conversation.”
It is, of course, the choice of the name “Re-Create 68” that causes people to visualize Denver’s streets filled with tear gas and billy-club-wielding police during the last week in August. The resonance to Chicago 1968’s Democratic National Convention, turns out, was a somewhat doubled-edge sword.
And there are those who seem ready to act out such a scenario. Especially the police, who are planning for the chance to arrest around 3,000 people, and who are going to look pretty damn silly, after arguing for all of that budget money, if they don’t actually fill up that hotel from hell.
If a comment posted recently on a Rocky Mountain News blog is to be believed, at least one person is “Getting ready for the anticipated and promised R-68 assault. Let’s hope the National Guard is prepared to deal with arson.” Arson, of course ... ding dang ... there has actually been no table set up plan made for how to commit arson, the Rush Limbaugh crowd might be disappointed to find.
Such saber-rattling wasn’t even actually behind April’s announcement from Tent State University that it wants no ties to Re-create 68.
The group describes itself at Tentstate.com as a “Coalition of Projects in Pursuit of Democracy.”
“We were never a part of Re-create 68,” said Adam Jung a University of Denver student who serves as the group’s Colorado spokesperson. “We severed ties because the media had married us together, and the messaging was incompatible.”
See these words?
“Media.”
“Messaging.”
“Incompatible.”
As in, watch and learn ...
Spagnuolo, however, says the groups had been linked, but there are no money trails here. No special sections to produce. And since the troubles of the world are so diverse, nothing the logic choppers can really get their minds around.
Of the Tent State thing, yeah, sure, not even the left-of-the-left of center can hold these days for very long. “That’s a group where there has been a split,” Spagnuolo said. “There was a falling out, and we admit that. For them to say, though, that they weren’t a part of our effort is ridiculous. They clearly were. They even participated in one of our early press conferences.”
Still, Spagnuolo is willing to concede that the members of Tent State “were drawn in by … issues over name, and issues about how nonviolent we (actually) were. But we support nonviolent groups and we still support them.”
Tent State, of course, could’ve have been accused of casting the some sort of resonating flames from a bad day gone by, the Kent State shootings that inspired Neil Young’s classic, “Ohio,” but who’s counting?
Not the mainstream media. They are always going to glorify the dissent within the dissent, rather than the real way business works under the Golden Dome of Rome: Just follow money, it flows toward authority, to the right. Like the Demos could even think clear enough with Hillary and Obama banging in out, to come up with any comprehensible copy, for say a special section to run in the local state political gossip sheet, the Colorado Statesman, like the Republican party was able to do for its own state delegate convention. Follow the money, indeed ...
Re-create 68 also had been disinvited from using a tent designated for demonstrators during the convention, it was announced at a R-68 meeting in May. But at at Re-create ‘68 meeting, some of that news was regarded with a happy challenge. At least there was something within target range they could actually break through.
Fellow co-founder Barbara Cohen says Re-create 68’s early “successes,” as she put it, haven’t helped its image. That includes drawing the attention of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh seized on the name, saying he “welcomed” the notion of riots during the convention and was “dreaming” that they’d happen, exclaiming, “Riots in Denver! The Democratic Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats.”
When critics charged that Limbaugh was inciting listeners to riot, radio station KOA, which carries the show, issued a statement saying, “A review of the full transcript from Limbaugh’s show on Wednesday, April 23, shows that Limbaugh was not advocating violence in Denver at the Democratic National Convention, but trying to make the point that if there were riots in Denver, it would hurt the Democrats’ chances of winning the 2008 presidential election.”
The controversy thrust Re-create 68 into the spotlight as the focus of liberal anxiety and conservative glee and helped make Spagnuolo a darling of the radio talk show circuit.
It also has led the three co-founders, Spagnuolo, Barbara Cohen and her husband, Mark Cohen, to assert that the anti-war movement during the breakout year of protests against the Vietnam War is the real source of their inspiration in naming the group.
“We all agreed the name would get attention, but it’s not re-create Chicago ’68, but re-create the year 1968,” said Barbara Cohen, a longtime local peace activist who, with her husband, was a plaintiff in the famous Denver “Spy Files” lawsuit after police targeted the couple as “criminal extremists.”
“We are an umbrella group that is trying to get the other umbrella groups together ... from every political stream,” she said. “We’ve worked with progressive Democrats, anarchists, Green Party members, everybody working together to put on nonviolent events.”
Spagnuolo says he also wishes the media would characterize Re-create 68 not as a group of rabble-rousers, but rather as an alliance of leftist dissenters that’s trying to get the Democratic Party and its presumptive nominee to commit to bringing the war in Iraq to a speedy halt.
The group has recently obtained hard-fought permits to demonstrate during the DNC. During those demonstrations, rather than rioting, Spagnuolo says the group plans peaceful protests of what they characterize as Barack Obama’s “toned-down” anti-war rhetoric.
Spagnuolo says the new tack indicates Obama is moving his political position “more to the center, in order to get votes.”
If Re-Create 68’s most ambitious hope is to denounce Obama’s move the center, it’s hard to believe the group will draw down the National Guard. Nevertheless, Spagnuolo believes Denver’s government is stocking up on anti-riot weaponry and is itching to use it.
Spagnuolo alleges Denver has purchased such devices as a ray gun to send microwave pulses into a crowd, creating an extremely uncomfortable heat sensation, and an acoustic device that bounces sonic waves off crowds to induce stomach distress.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has sued the city for access to public records related to the purchase of security-related equipment, Spagnuolo said, but the city, “will neither confirm nor deny whether they have purchased these weapons” for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
In response to a request filed by the ACLU under the Colorado Open Records Act seeking disclosure of the records, the city’s Department of Safety records coordinator, Mary Dulacki, denied their release on the grounds that disclosure “was contrary to the public interest” and because “it could potentially disclose tactical security information.”
Whether or not they’ve been purchased, Spagnuolo says even the rumor of such devices has sent a chill to groups planning demonstrations.
“They are trying to build up paranoia to make people afraid to come out and execute their constitutional rights,” Spagnuolo said. “I think the city should be embarrassed with their actions to date ... It’s going to leave a lasting black eye, the way they view people who protest as a criminal element.”
City officials have attempted to quell this type of criticism by announcing parade routes for public marches and promising to process parade permits promptly.
In a written statement, Katherine Archuleta, senior policy and initiative adviser to Mayor John Hickenlooper, recently stated, “We’ve been working to enable organizations with diverse viewpoints and agendas to have access to a safe and visible parade route for the purpose of public expression.”
The notice coincides with an agreement reached with the ACLU, which on May 1 had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on the behalf of groups seeking improved access to certain areas for public expression.
But Spagnuolo, who has been a Denver resident for seven years but cut his activism teeth on the streets of New York, isn’t convinced.
“This city doesn’t want its $50 million party interrupted,” he said. “They feel like this will tarnish the Democratic Party.”
National and local media outlets have been quick to jump on such statements.
For example, in January, 9News political analyst Floyd Ciruli said: “If they actually do turn Denver into Chicago, there’s a very good chance they will turn off the voters. It could be directly counterproductive to what they would like to do.”
Yet, back in the real space of the Gypsy House Café, the only violence under consideration was dealing with Pieface, a relic hippie activist they think might try to hit Oprah Winfrey in the face with a pie. Of course, upstairs, with the hot-blooded proprietorship there, if you don't buy anything such as a piece of pie, or, a cup of coffee, in order to use the internet link by wireless, that same internet created by the military industrial complex to begin with, well then, they'll get pretty damn violent ... you'll be pushed out in the street for your "white man's complex " ... so the human animal has all potentials under that chapel perilous, too! Indeed, the weirdness of the atmosphere around the Gypsy House Cafe these days can get so wired, so paranoid, so set on edge it's practically one of Denver's best tourism attractions, if you like that kind of thing ... you could almost convince yourself that spooks of all varieties are there, too, watching you watching them, as they take a hookah toke or two ...
But if Re-Create 68 actually is a front for subversives working under Limbaugh, things must be tougher than they seem in the right-wing military-industrial cabal. Cohen announced to the circle that the group had a mere $1,600 in its antiwar chest. An early plan to have people show their support by underwriting portable toilets for protesters just hadn’t panned out as successfully as the PBS “All Things Considered” had reported. The size ... the size of things ... they all seem to depend upon the distance they are seen from.
But for the geriatric set, the Boomers, who clearly have the practical real world in mind, they clearly have such important questions to ask regarding the survival of the human race as: Has no time been “wasted,” buzzed in some Statesman editor from her office hotbox, stressing in the addressing of the hygienic or other bodily needs of the estimated “thousand to 100,000” demonstrators who actually might hitchhike into Denver in August “wearing headbands, bell bottoms and beads, bearing flowers and protest signs, and taking an occasional mellow toke as they flash the peace sign.”
(That same editor tried to insert those same lines into this same similar report ...)
But it didn’t work, just like the economy, or, the war machine doesn’t seem to work right anymore: Instead, the group discussed presentations, film fests and which bands to book. You know, stuff to keep the people outside the castle walls entertained while the real deals are made at the DNC.
As the meeting broke up, Spagnuolo was asked if he thinks Re-create 68 will bring a repeat of the rioting and violence that gripped Chicago during the 68 convention.
“That will be up to the Denver Police Department,” he said. “Any violence would be at the hands of the Denver Police Department.
“I’m more worried about people being killed in Iraq in my name,” he said. “The local media has branded us (as violent agitators) because it’s what sells. But there’s nothing sexy to report when people’s constitutional rights are being violated.”
And if he’s a radical, he’s an equal opportunity opponent of the two-party system. When asked if he’d also be protesting at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul in September, he said, “I will be if I’m not still in jail.”

Douglas McDaniel is the author of 15 books, including his most recent, a book of poetry for the political season, "Ginsberg Rolls Over," published by Mythville MetaMedia.

A Robert Earl Keen, Jr. Sense of Irony

2008-06-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

By Douglas McDaniel

It goes this way: When a boy becomes a man in his twenties, he’s really just becoming a happier boy. In his thirties, certain once inert chemicals disperse in his brain causing him to wonder where that happy boy went. Then, in his forties, when the result of those energies are unleashed, when he’s finally determined that life is nothing but a bitch; when he’s reflecting on that all: Well then, he’s ready to become a regular Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
The Kerrville, Texas-based singer/songwriter’s productive cycle appears to be in that period when all of the trouble is finally being appreciated and the man finally settles down to a kind of childlike contentment, too.
For example, this fall, a new release will arrive that exemplifies his standing in the music community at the age of 52. In January, numerous artists converged at the MusicFest at Steamboat Springs to honor Keen, performing interpretations of Keen’s influential material at the popular festival’s annual Tribute to a Legend gala. The recording, “Live Is Good,” is slated for release by Right Avenue Records. In addition to performances by the full electric band backing Keen, it includes acoustic tribute performances by Cody Canada, Cory Morrow, Chris Knight, Jason Boland, Stoney LaRue, Bonnie Bishop, Reckless Kelly, Wade Bowen, Max Stalling, Micky, Gary, and Muzzie Braun, Walt Wilkins, Randy Rogers, Roger Creager, Matt Powell, Brandon Rhyder, Dub Miller, Doug Moreland, Matt Skinner, Kathleen Braun, Josh Grider, Darren Kozelsky, and Rich O’Toole.
But at the base of a curve of his mid-period career, in 1997, he made a small hit out of the song, “Over the Waterfall,” helping (with Lyle Lovett, Nancy Griffith and Ryan Adams, who was with Whiskeytown at the time) to practically invent a style of alt-country for the radio dial, with a line that goes: “The beauty of sadness is feeling the pain.” At that point Keen had gained ground in the creative sphere because of the sadness he found in his late thirties, early forties, with a song that began with the lines:

I slipped through your fingers
into the clouds
Ran down the concrete hallways
Pushed through the crowds.
I watched by the water
Reached for the sun
Why did I bother
What's done is done

Then, the chorus:

And all that's left of me now
Is waiting to drown
Over the waterfall (falling down)

Now, there’s a mandolin solo pushing “Waterfall” along to it’s over-the-edge apogee of intended sorrow.
Because that riff, and those lines, reveal Keen in a nutshell: Finding the beauty in the pain revealed by a singer/songwriter who, at his best, has a penchant for serving up his lyricism on a very tough hook. Rendered almost journalistically deadpan. As just a passing observation.
Indeed, a major exegesis could be written about that Keen standard, recorded at the age of 34, “The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends,” in which we find the protagonist, a waitress, Sherry, who gets the guy, Sonny, to drive her to Florida. The man finds the trouble, sure, but the woman ends up with all of the money, and her boyfriend goes to jail for a crime he, apparently, did not commit. Clearly, in this case, Keen’s English and journalism courses at Texas A&M were time well spent.
Cast within its small town savvy and strength of storytelling, its characters fully evolve into fully traveling denizens of the road. In terms of its hook about the party never ending, on all sides giving it new meaning each time the chorus is sung, ending the story with a Keen sense of irony, he is saying something else entirely.
Yes, a good part of his best creative period was spent likely musing on the most heartbreaking truths. There’s a dark sarcasm at work in “Party Never Ends.” Must be why he’s so tight with the college crowd staring into the abyss of the futureworld.
A decade ago, around age of 42, a little after the album “Picnic” was opening the door for his best work of those years to be recognized, he told Rolling Stone magazine, “I fight being jaded all the time. I love music -- all of my best memories have to do with musical experiences. But at the same time, I see people say things that they're going to do with their career, or hear them say they're going to tell people that it's going to be this way, and I want to just jump out and say, 'Don't do that! You're cutting your own throat! They're not going to listen to you, you're not going to change the world, you've got to work with it.' And that's where you get jaded -- you find out you don't change the world, you have to work within the world that you're walking in.”
Just trying to get a grip on Robert Earl Keen’s musical output here. And it often points to a sense of loss, and thus, rebirth. Because the road doesn’t go on forever. The party does end, and sure, that’s the beauty of feeling the pain. But an over-50s folk hero really is something to be.

###

New Media to Shred: Rose Hill Drive's 'Moon is the New Earth'

2008-06-28T13:12:00.000-07:00

Rose Hill Drive
Moon is the New Earth
(Megaforce Records)

... In which one of Boulder's best-known bands moves further out of orbit, ever closer to Mars, finding reasonable rent on the lit side of the Moon. The new release finds the power-trio breaking out with a bigger, thicker, perhaps even dirtier guitar-based sound. The first track, "Sneak Out," reminds me of Fleetwood Mac's classic bust out rocker, "Oh Well," but since nobody asked why I thought of that, tis better to say "A Better Way" is a better indicator of what has been achieved in Boulder's Coupe Studios: post-Pearl Jam space romps, with glassy low-register vocals, high-flyin' riffs. Muddy in all of the right places and guitar solos tending toward short sprints, rather than long hikes, this is a much bigger sound than what I remember from a Telluride gig for the band a couple of years ago. Lots of smart dissonance here, too. "The 8th Wonder," with its heavy distortion and bits of arabesque, then a lunar launch. A nice arching finale at song 12, "Always Waiting" makes for a document round and whole. Yeah, it all works. Best tracks for a single, or radio, or satellite, or wherever music gets popularized these days: the more acoustic, catchy "One Night Stand; or, "Do You Wanna Get High?", because yeah, after listening to this, I do.
-- Douglas McDaniel

1 Giant Leap for Mankind

2008-06-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

A decade ago global multimedia convergence was merely a moon shot business paradigm, an open-ended concept flying right off the edge of the known world. For the machine mind, lacking the bandwidth to make all human expression available to the consuming audience, it was like an oversized Great Pumpkin being push through a hand-cranked meat grinder. It was only for a fortunate elite of prosumer guinea pig geeks who cared to spend five grand for a PC on steroids, usually the type of people who were featured wizards for Wired Magazine or who freelanced data crunching modules for the NSA, who could manage to collect RAM like speed-obsessed silver speculators.
Now, though, it’s common to find art instigators using their machines as magical wands for producing intelligent life. Almost every conceivable type of performance is rendered handy through a laptop as cumbersome as a coffee-table book with more amped-up power than the first Apollo missions, which spits out and picks up all of this thrilling cultural stream from out of the thin air.
Your mileage for all of this techgnosis may vary.
1 Giant Leap’s mileage just happens to be limitless. Just as long as the duo, consisting of Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman, doesn’t mind going in circles, globally. Taking this step for mankind to another advanced conclusion, they’ve managed to move a convergent media franchise forward for undeterred post-pop positivism. The kind that spawns a globe-trotting travelogue to reach medicine men, movie stars, progressive thinkers, artisans, singers, rappers, poets, authors, philosophers, pretty much anyone with a great creative vibe. They turn all of this gaia stuff into movies and world music-goes-ambient CDs, all to be broadcast on every conceivable medium, all of it to a great, dancing beat.
For you hardline lefties out there ready to dismiss 1 Giant Leap’s one-hundred-beat per minute drive to soak up the world’s cultural zeitgeist, their second film and CD release, “What About Me?,” can hardly be accused of typical imperial Brit appropriatin’. It’s more like 1 Giant Leap offers the world its rhythms, asking the whole planet to appropriate them.
As Catto said recently, “We have an amazing network of people who we think are stunningly talented and we hook them up with other people that are stunningly talented to get cool people working together.”
1 Giant Leap is, is nothing else, is an observance on how film and music are both sold at the same bazaar in the global village square.
Catto, 40, has for a couple of decades honed his skills as one of the founding members and ballad singer of Faithless, a music group from the same collaborative generation as Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. After the singer/songwriter became the art director and video director for the band, he left in 1999 to form 1 Giant Leap as a project. In doing so, it formed out of his own chaotic collection of skills as photographer, script editor and arteur catalyst a perfect Coke bottle for inviting the world to sing.
There's no discrimination between art and entertainment, nor need to disenfranchise anything. What you end up with, in “What About Me?” is an audiovisual project bringing together performers and thinkers from around the world. The effect on the screen bombards your singed-globe sensibilities in much the same style as “What the (Bleep) Do We Know?”
Reached for a brief chat amid the creative chaos of his life by the telly from London, Catto seemed to both like and distance himself from that caparison, saying, “It feels good that (What the Bleep) did well, but it wouldn’t do to say they influenced us. More like, it was the other way around.”
The first film by Catto and Bridgeman, an experienced director and producer with such film credits as “Bulletproof Mask” and “Lady in the Water, was called “1 Giant Leap.” Nominated from a Grammy, the film and album/DVD was recorded on a six-month trip around the world and includes musical and spoken-word contributions from Michael Stipe, Kurt Vonnegut, Dennis Hopper, Brian Eno, Baaba Maal, Tom Robbins and Arrested Development, among others.
But if combining Stipe for a song with Asha Bhosle, or Eddi Reader with the Mahotella Queens and Revetti Sakalar, might seem a tad complex, they are pretty Thoreau in the simplicity of their approach. Their chief items in the travel bag: The laptop and video camera.
“When you walk into some village in Africa, we don’t have a have a 16-member crew, which certainly makes it easier to get around,” he says. “To keep it low key is really useful. So we have a three-member crew. That includes two men and one woman.”
Having a woman on the team gives the group more access, he says. “People trust women more, I think.”
In Britain, the band makes its initial tracks to sing to with a 10-piece band, and then spreads the quantum vibe outward from there.
“We are just trying to put together the most inspiring people, the most inspiring singers ... the most inspiring everything that can be made.”

-- Douglas McDaniel

2006-07-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

23 Roads to Mythville
An apocalyptic journey across America and meditation on the imposition of order in space, both cyber and dirt real. By experiential author Douglas McDaniel, who explores the mysteries of American networked life. Read more

Ipswich at War
A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, poet and essayist Douglas McDaniel moved to Ipswich, on the North Shore of Massachusetts. A collection of poems from that period of fear and anxiety, as well as the polemic essay, "Media Arts and War."
Read more

Glasnost Lost
As an act of defiance after the botched election of 2000, experiential author launched himself into a journey into the underworld of American life, or, what he calls: The Science of Descent. Read more

Godz, Cars & Cannon
Experiential author Douglas McDaniel launches drives into the networked thickets of American life, looking for signs of myth and romance in the age of automotive machines.
Read more

Many Moons the Mythville: The Collected Road Poems
Poetry written during a 10-year span of criss-crossing America in a roving-eye view of the turn-of-the-century landscape of Mythville, or, as the author puts it: "It's all a bunch of Mythville." With work from four separate books by Arizona-based author and poet Douglas McDaniel, the bard-inspired voices of Milton, Blake and Yeats, as well as the saturnine streak of early beat poesy, ring through this collection of poems and essays. From the southwestern deserts to the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, "Many Moons to Mythville" is a foot-to-the-floor blast through the mythical roads of American life.
Read more

Human Search Engine

The journey continues as the quest for myth in an age of information overload leads to online life as an editor for Access Internet Magazine. A story about all human search engines as they chase the ghost in the machine.
Read more

William Blake in Cyberspace

Experiential author Douglas McDaniel takes on the visionary art and poetry of William Blake, comparing an otherworldly worldview to that revolutionary, romantic era to our own wild, wired, mythic world.
Read more

The Kachina's Son

Poems about the Four Corners area written while author Douglas McDaniel was living in Telluride, Colorado.
Read more

The Road to Mythville
A collection of poems on the new millennium in America, drawing from decade of bouncing across the country as a journalist and Kerouac-style poet, from the Southwestern deserts to the shores of New England and back again.
Read more

2006-03-26T06:59:00.000-08:00

A lot has been happening in Mythville for the past full year. First off, a number of Mythville contacts have been successfully self-publishing their books.

For example, Lance Kaufman is getting his "Eyes of Sedona" book of photographs and anthropormorphic poesy into the bookstores of northern Arizona. It is the second book by Kaufman to be edited by the good folk of Mythville, and they are much proud and pleased for the association.

Next, the reluctant curmudgeon, Rod Amis, has gotten a special deal from Lulu.com for a well-received book on the demise of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, as well as a collection of African writers who have been part of his own stable of contributors at G21.net, "Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent."

In addition, Douglas McDaniel's satire, "The Valley Floor War," has been included in an anthology that's part of a fund-raising effort for Sheep Mountain Alliance, which is fighting development efforts on the so-called Valley Floor near Telluride, Colorado. In the past year McDaniel has succeeded in getting his work sold in bookstores across Oregon, including the Bloomsbury bookstore in Ashland, Oregon, and outlets in and around Lincoln City, on the central coast of the state, including Bob's Beach Books, The Book End and yes, The Filthy, if only because William Blake would like it that way. In Arizona, McDaniel's books are avaialable across northern Arizona, including the well-read Coyote in Sedona, A Step in Time in Camp Verde, as well as at all other outlets for Norazpoets.org, including the regional slam poetry group's aforementioned Web site.

To learn more, just click on the bookstore links to the right, or just dial up "Mythville" on Google.

Last Train to Mythville : AZ IMC

2004-11-04T05:02:00.000-08:00

Last Train to Mythville : AZ IMC

Google Search: Mythville

2004-08-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

Google Search: Mythville

Mythville publishes another: Glasnost Lost

2004-08-26T00:36:00.000-07:00

Take the Road to Mythville

New Media Shredder

2004-08-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

New Media Shredder created to scorch Valley media

G21 - MY GLASS HOUSE: "Building Character"

2004-08-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

G21 - MY GLASS HOUSE: "Building Character"

Ipswich at War by Douglas McDaniel

2004-08-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

Ipswich at War by Douglas McDaniel (Book) in Books > Fiction & Literature > Poetry > American Poetry

Yahoo! News - U.S. Uses Lethal Aircraft to Try to Break Sadr

2004-08-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - U.S. Uses Lethal Aircraft to Try to Break Sadr

Sea Lion Records

2004-08-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

Sea Lion Records

An interview with Douglas McDaniel, publisher, Mythville.com

2004-08-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

On Thursday mornings in Scottsdale, Arizona, they gather: The bards of Mythville.com. First comes Douglas McDaniel, former managing editor for the Paradise Valley Independent, North Scottsdale Independent and the Northeast Phoenix Independent. Mythville is his gig now. His band. His idea. His gamble. But lately, he wonders where the idea really came from.

"Best not ask a gift horse in thy mouth," he muses.

Next comes, Lance Kaufman, who has always, always been there at this regular hour at the Coffee Plantation with his books about looking, anthropormorphically, at the stones of Mummy Mountain for coffee table books reminiscent of the shamanistic incantations of human pre-history.

The next bard of Mythville comes to the table: J.J. Smith-Moore, the media-shy "Unknown Scribbler," whose book inspired by the illustrator Edward Gorey actually surpasses the master, at least in terms of her sense of line. Though she is always a bit frazzled as she sits from chasing her kids around all morning, she sees the latest works by Mr. McDaniel, including "23 Roads to Mythville," "William Blake in Cyberspace" and "Godz, Cars & Cannon," and immediately locates a raft of fixes to be made. As the graphic designer for various publishing casuses as well as her own publishing effort, Sibling Press, her immaculate tastes and sensitivities constantly leave the group hurrying home to jot all of those ideas down.

Others have been coming, and coming, for about three months now. Mr. McDaniel decided he would keep regular hours at the Plantation. Not that anything gets solved at these meetings between the morning-bedrazzled bards of Mythville: The point is to just share ideas, to move ideas further along, to participate in what has become an online resource and bookstore for independent publishers from Paradise Valley to New England, New Orleans and points in-between.

These days, Mr. McDaniel has begun to realize "Mythville," especially its subordinate blogger pages (http://mythville.blogspot.com) to the home page, Mythville.com, is no longer his. And he is fine with that. "Good to bring the Indians along," says he. "The buffalo are returning."

Other bards of Mythville include the South African poet Ellen Palestrant, local poetess Jaimie Ondrea Dunn, the so-called "Exile from Iowa," and Heather Kirk, whose local arts newsletter is growing links by the day. In other places, well, in New Orleans there is G21.net editor and main mind Rod Amis, whose book "My Glass House" will be published by Mythville.com within the next month, and Sally Applegate, of Essex County, Massachusetts, who has done her best to spread the word in a place made famous for hanging its witches. From the same place, there's Sully, a childens storyteller and one of the original inspirations for the Mythville short-reads-is-what-we-need ethic. In addition to all that, there is the real Harry Potter. In fact, the real Harry "Harold" Potter is a medievalist who lives in Michigan and is recreating artful books of arcana dating back 1,500 years.

As they settle in, the interview begins as McDaniel twitches, wishing he could smoke ...

Question: Where in the world is Mythville?
McDaniel:
Nowhere, so much, because at the end of it all, it exists in each and everyone’s mind. Thing of it like the impossible endless search for the Holy Grail. It’s the storehouse of each person’s personal mythology, where all of their angels and demons live. It’s the shining city of light. A place the imagination (and therefore the soul) can go into infinite directions. For some people, it’s a whole barnyard of beings and deities, gods and their avatars.
Question: But that doesn’t answer the question.
McDaniel: Well, just do a Google search on "Mythville," and at that point, your road to Mythville will have begun.
Question: Why do I need to go to Mythville when, like you say, it already exists as a kind of third eye in our own minds?
McDaniel: I guess because I’m just a trailblazer for an idea. And I wrote a hell of a lot about the search. And I continue to do so. The word, I own, I suppose, since I invented it the same way rock bands come up with their names. Its a unique identifier. Certainly helps with Web searches. But really, the ownership of Mythville, the one I propose, is for pretty much anyone. Anyone who gets the code.
Question: The code?
McDaniel: Ah yes, code is law. Indeed it is. Just like the Da Vinci code, too, but in this case it's a real story of that search. You do need to be able to work your machine to get to my machine and then download either an e-book or print-on-demand book. The road to Mythville is now paved in print or Adobe PDF, Microsoft Reader, and soon, as a Palm upload for people on trains reading books on their cell phones.
Question: So the code is the computer, and all of these digitized geeks, who like to read about wizards, witches and Mythville, the enviro digitists, the online sorcerers, they are your audience?
McDaniel: Well, kind of, it's certainly the pathway. The road of superinformation. Like Blake said, "The road of excess leads to the palace of Wisdom."
Question: OK, so where or when did your, um, personal Mythville begin?
McDaniel: Mythville was born on the Smolak Farm in Andover, actually, when I had a long discussion about rabbits and books with "Sully," as in local author William Sullivan, who writes numerous short, somewhat quirky children's books. It was the fall of 2000. Election day was looming. It was a beautiful day. Picking apples, wandering through the trees, picking a pumpkin with my little girl. Then I talked to "Sully" and saw what he was trying to do, and is still doing, writing fairy tales about rabbits and a whole barnyard of his own characters. I was the senior editor for Access Internet Magazine, another kind of content farm, and I suddenly realized the connection between the mythological constructs of William Blake and the hierarchical order of the online, and therefore, real world. And more than that, what it might mean for a self-publisher of numerous, smaller, shorter, more digestible reads. In other words, making e-books, William Blake-style.
But, actually, the experiment in experiential literature all started,
also, with a pirate flag. That is really the crux of the whole thing. That was my first logo. The pirate flag.
The inquisitor: What? A pirate flag? What kind of Peter Pan fantasies are we talking about here?
McDaniel: That’s right, the medium is the message. The pirate flag is the crux of the whole thing.
The inquisitor: How so?
McDaniel: You aren’t listening … the pirate flag … the crux … the whole thing. Oh well, maybe I really should backtrack.
Inquisitor: Backtrack! We haven’t gotten anywhere yet.
McDaniel: Even in being still, we are always moving. Sometimes the truth will fly right past you.
Inquisitor: The truth, now, that’s it. You are some piece of work. Do you have a permit to hold this gathering here?
McDaniel: Permit? No. Everything is permitted in Mythville. As long as it has something to do with making a book and expressing oneself. It's all about letting go of all of our anxiety, somehow, in this new century.
Inquisitor: Still, I’m curious about the pirate flag.
McDaniel: OK, so there’s the election. I voted for Nader. Who knew? Then, this long period of a couple of weeks, then a month, then six weeks of nobody knowing who the hell is in charge anymore, right?
Then came a solar storm …
The inquisitor: A what?
McDaniel: A solar storm hit New England. I looked it up. Nobody believed me, except for a lady in a gas station pay station near the freeway in Andover.
The inquisitor: Saw what?
McDaniel: A lake of fire in the sky, over Lawrence. I thought the whole place was ablaze with lightning.
The inquisitor: You are insane.
McDaniel: Oh yes, it was there. I did research on what happened. Look it up yourself, a freak solar storm hit New England, the whole earth, really, sometime between the election and December 13, 2000. Apparently, it was the end of a 13-year cycle of unusual activity. My theory is that it sent vibrations turbulatin’ on into the very core of the earth.
Inquisitor (on the cell phone): Get me security. (Now writing things down in a little notebook). OK, so you say you saw a lake of fire in the sky over Lawrence. But what does that have to do with a pirate flag?
McDaniel: Well, after the Supreme Court had ruled to decide the election, I just broke loose. I wanted nothing to do with this country, or, any other. It was as if a bolt of lightning had briefly lit up every one of our institutions and revealed, for just one brief flash of X-ray, every one of our major institutions as faulty, frail and hopelessly corrupt. For me, looking at it from the dark, wintery, London-esque Mordor of Boston, one big, giant, monstrous … well … one big complete bogus ... Mythville.
The inquisitor: Now you are using it a different way. Won’t that confuse your audience?
McDaniel: Audience? At that point, I was just one guy with a blogger, then more, then more, starting at http://mythville.blogspot.com/. A voice crying out in the wilderness. So, as my world was coming apart, and I was determined to tap out of the system, especially creatively, in pursuit of this self-publishing, self-expressive dream, I decided I needed to network with like-minded people.
So, what I did was, I took the pirate flag, which I intended to give to my future-ex-father in law for Christmas, and I planted it on the front porch.
I wanted to signify to anyone who might get the code: Panic! Panic! It’s time to take action. It’s time to be a pirate.
The inquisitor: Then what happened?
McDaniel: My wife threatened divorce. My in-laws, Sicilian mob-style, tried to get me kicked out of our place there in North Andover. They called the cops. Stirred up the neighbors. Threatened to send thugs over to kick me out. Took the family car, a kind of wedding gift, away, leaving me wheeless. Once, when I had left the home, they snuck into the basement and pulled out all of the fuses, leaving the place completely dark. I guess they figured I would never be able to get the old place back up and running. In fact, I'm pretty damend good with matters electric. They called the landlord and said I was burning candles in the house and leaving wax all over the place, like some kind of creepy Vincent Price.
Inquisitor: Were there candles?
McDaniel: Yes, but I only burned them at dusk, as a ritual before more writing and blogging and so on. I was in mourning. Look, I'm not saying I wasn't getting a pretty weird. I was just expressing the anxiety and turbulance I was feeling all around me. For God's sake. It was the year 2000!
Inquisitor: Then what happened?
McDaniel: Well, some pretty cool people got curious about what I was up to, and started to come over to the house. I’m sure this sudden new type of gathering in the neighborhood only served to stir things up even more. By this time, the North Andover police really wanted my ass in a sling. One cop, a long-timer macho kid, who lived here all his life, came over, and asked me, after I smarted off about "search and seizure" and some such lunacy, he asked me if I was a lawyer. I said yes, I went to Harvard law school. It was true. What I didn’t say was it was only for one day to attend an Internet-related conference on MP3s and Napster. Anyway, I was obviously going head-to-head with the Gillette crate-packing mentality around there.
Anyway, that’s when I really started to meet the witches of Essex county, too. They would come over, hang out. I would play loud music and try to describe what, exactly, Mythville is. People from Darlene Torosian’s Salon in North Andover. In fact, she rented the house with her kids after I left. But we had designers, Webmasters, entrepeneurs, like-minded folk came over. This Reiki therapy trainee came over and practiced Reiki therapy on us. It was a real salon, Parisian style, and I was the Antone Mesmer, the Cagliostro. Or, at least one of them. It only lasted for a short while, though, a few weeks at the most ...
The Inquisitor: Why?
McDaniel: Well, I had decided to get out of there. The whole plan was to end up in Telluride,writing my tales from my heart-home, anyway. So with so many problems for me in the neighborhood, my pending divorce, and all of the loousy bitterness and stupidity that entails, I decided to leave, going back to my friends in the mountains of southwestern Colorado. From there, at about 9,500 feet in altitude, I launched the first incarnation of Mythville.org.
Then, I lived in Telluride for a year, then came back to New England, living in Ipswich this time, in order to clear up legal stuff related to the divorce. But right as I moved back, this time to Ipswich, Sept. 11 changed everything. I felt like I was right at the front here on the North Shore. Hence, the writing from that period is in a book of poetry I’ve just released, "Ipswich at War." It captures all of my written observations at that time.
Inquisitor: And then?
McDaniel: I moved to Haverhill because it was cheaper, setting up a small metamedia bookstore right there on the street. And, of course, I always put my pirate flag out on the window to attract like-minded people and ward away the foul spirits, too. Artists. Writers. Programmers. Scammers. Lunatics wandering that unwalled insane asylum called Haverhill. Perfect town for Mythville. Lot of Peter Pan fantasies floating around up and down the main old downtown quad. I even did a one-night performance of "William Blake in Cyberspace" at the Wingate Micro Theatah, and wrote a lot of all of the my current book material by drinking beer and bashing away on my laptop in the Irish bar downstairs. I loved that place. A writer’s place, that bar.
Inquisitor: Then what?
McDaniel: I almost starved. Trying to sell e-books and print-on-demand poetry is not, exactly, the stuff of commerce, I find. You can only go so far with a pirate flag in your shop window. Most people didn’t know what to make of Mythville. But that’s changing.
Inquisitor: Do you have a political party, a religious preference? You sound like one of those LaRue style crazies to me
I'm a Reformed Metaphysical Anarchist. Not entirely unlike a Rastafarian. Reformed because, actually, a monarchy would seem to be what we have here in this country. It's just a different kind of elitist tier system, that's all. Unfortunately, philosopher kings are currently in short supply as candidates. The public doesn't give a fuck about even the shadows flickering on the wall anymore. So until then, it's to thine own self be true, and hope everybody else eventually realizes the only actual political boundary, that of Gaia, is atmospheric in nature and moving, through space, on the moment at perilous speeds.
Inquisitor: OK, so what are you doing now.
McDaniel: Now I’ve learned how to create and sell a line of my own e-books and PODs via online Mythville from my base at Tatum and Bell here in Phoenix. I’m encouraging my past contacts in publishing after all of these years to do the same. Now Mythville has become a community of links for self-publishers of all kinds. I have about a dozen authors, today in Phoenix and elsewhere, who are psyched about the idea. So much that they are using the same tools, mostly Lulu.com but also iuniverse.com, to create their own e-books and PODs in a cost-effective way. Then, all I do is post the link. It's a bookstore of links.
And thus, a quirky little beehive of like-minded souls grows.
Inquisitor: Would you look at my book?
McDaniel: Yes, of course. As William Blake wrote: The artist and oppressor are one.

With that, the press conference ended, as McDaniel turned, walked out to smoke, and continued on his search on the road to Mythville.
http://mythville.blogspot.com

http://Mythville.com
Mythville@yahoo.com

23 Roads to Mythville by Douglas McDaniel (Book) in Books > Fiction

2004-08-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

23 Roads to Mythville by Douglas McDaniel (Book) in Books > Fiction & Literature > Politics & Social Issues

G21 - AMERICAN DREAMS - "1000 Points of Bin Laden"

2004-08-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

G21 - AMERICAN DREAMS - "1000 Points of Bin Laden"

Tenebris: Mythville

2004-07-28T05:38:00.001-07:00

Tenebris: Mythville

TownOnline.com - North Andover Citizen - Arts & Lifestyle

2004-07-15T15:23:00.000-07:00

TownOnline.com - North Andover Citizen - Arts & Lifestyle

Google Search: "Douglas McDaniel"

2004-07-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

Google Search: "Douglas McDaniel"

Google Search: "Mythville"

2004-07-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

Google Search: "Mythville"

Backflip Publisher: Webgeist | Folder: The Road to Mythville

2004-07-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

Backflip Publisher: Webgeist | Folder: The Road to Mythville

blogdex - weblog diffusion - mythville.blogspot.com

2004-07-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

blogdex - weblog diffusion - mythville.blogspot.com

index

2004-07-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

index

blogdex - weblog diffusion - mythville.blogspot.com

2004-07-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

blogdex - weblog diffusion - mythville.blogspot.com

TownOnline.com - North Andover Citizen - Arts

2004-07-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

TownOnline.com - North Andover Citizen - Arts & Lifestyle

Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness.

2004-06-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness.

Mythinformation For Self-Publishing Revolution :: Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness.

2004-06-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

Mythinformation For Self-Publishing Revolution :: Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness.

2004-06-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

"There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats."
-- H.L. Mencken

The Mythville Chronicle

2004-06-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

A Self-Interview with Self-Publisher and Self-Publishing Promoter, Douglas McDaniel

By Douglas McDaniel
Mythville.com

The scene: In the imaginary Mythville of his mind, experiential author and poet Douglas McDaniel readies the coffee for his press conference, pulling a folded pouch of black, white, quite stained cloth from his backpack. He sets it on a cement bench with various notebooks of poems, a backpack, a compass, Mythville.com business cards, small piles of books for sale, a carved wooden "eagle" and, gotta have it, the Mythville logo, which is a steer skull and the words Mythville.org.

"A premonition of anthrax," Mr. McDaniel chuckles, to himself, in the Mythville of his mind, on how that logo was devised nine months before Sept. 11, 2001, but only a few weeks, if that long, after Dec. 13, 2000, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled all dimpled chads null and void. "That’s the kind of humor you find in Mythville. Oh well, satire never plays fair. All we really knew back then, the witches of Essex and myself, was there was going to be some serious hell to pay. And the logo, the dot org, a network of one? What a gag!

"A serious non-prophet action, yes it is, yes it is."

Oh yeah, the scene, again: the Jack Kerouac shrine in Lowell, Massachusetts. Right by the river. Betwixt the satanic red-brick mills. The site is chosen, in the Mythville of his mind, because just four years before, sometime after the so-called "election" of George W. Bush Jr. as national executioner, and just prior to the dawn of the new century, that is, Jan. 1, 2001, Mr. McDaniel had accidentally found this place. Or, since there’s no such thing as an accident, it had found him. There he was, in a Chinese food restaurant in downtown Lowell, after coming out of the "T" station and hitching it over to the city center because, hey, it was something Kerouac would do. He didn’t really have that thought, however, until he opened up his fortune cookie and realized: He was "On the Road" to Mythville. He just loved to wander all over New England, by car, train or, at best, by foot, and let the thickety mysteries of the Hub, for this transplanted Arizonan, find him. Then, he got up, and started walking toward the Mer O Wac bridge, toward the home of this earth woman, a graphic designer and co-conspirator who had agreed to create a logo for the self-publishing effort.

And, along the way, wham! A moment of complete synchronicity. He walks right up to the Kerouac shrine. Ker O Wac by the Mer O Wac. Never even knew there was such a thing. A veritable stonehenge for the New Journalism.
So now, the coffee is ready. Time for the press conference. The pouch, a pirate flag unfolded and draped over his shoulders, like a cape. An act of bizarre eccentricity worthy of a Lord Byron or Robert Bly. There are snickers all around. He lights up a cig, an Indian bidi, blowing out the smoke for effect. To make it worse, he stands on the center stool of the Kerouac shrine, and his voice begins to boom as his sound waves bounce around within this literary circle, standing on this sorcerer’s stump.

Those in the audience, the members of the press, whisper and giggle, but with the acoustics everyone can hear the other: "What a piece of work!" "Standing on the shoulders of this giant, Kerouac! Indeed!" "I knew Jack Kerouac, and, click, click, paddywack, he ain’t no Jack Kerouac …"

The press conference begins:

McDaniel: Greetings from Mythville. Thank you for coming. Let’s just start with the questions and see what happens.

Question: Where in the world is Mythville?

McDaniel:
Nowhere, so much, because at the end of it all, it exists in each and everyone’s mind. Thing of it like the impossible endless search for the Holy Grail. It’s the storehouse of each person’s personal mythology, where all of their angels and demons live. It’s the shining city of light. A place the imagination (and therefore the soul) can go into infinite directions. For some people, it’s a whole barnyard of beings and deities, gods and their avatars.

Question: But that doesn’t answer the question.

McDaniel: Well, just do a Google search on "Mythville," and at that point, your road to Mythville will have begun.

Question: Why do I need to go to Mythville when, like you say, it already exists as a kind of third eye in our own minds?

McDaniel: I guess because I’m just a trailblazer for an idea. And I wrote a hell of a lot about the search. And I continue to do so. The word, I own, I suppose, since I invented it the same way rock bands come up with their names. Its a unique identifier. Certainly helps with Web searches. But really, the ownership of Mythville, the one I propose, is for pretty much anyone. Anyone who gets the code.

Question: The code?

McDaniel: Ah yes, code is law. Indeed it is. Just like the Da Vinci code, too, but in this case it's a real story of that search. You do need to be able to work your machine to get to my machine and then download either an e-book or print-on-demand book. The road to Mythville is now paved in print or Adobe PDF, Microsoft Reader, and soon, as a Palm upload for people on trains reading books on their cell phones.

Question: So the code is the computer, and all of these digitized geeks, who like to read about wizards, witches and Mythville, the enviro digitists, the online sorcerers, they are your audience?

McDaniel: Well, kind of, it's certainly the pathway. The road of superinformation. Like Blake said, "The road of excess leads to the palace of Wisdom."

Question: OK, so where or when did your, um, personal Mythville begin?

McDaniel: Mythville was born on the Smolak Farm in Andover, actually, when I had a long discussion about rabbits and books with "Sully," as in local author William Sullivan, who writes numerous short, somewhat quirky children's books. It was the fall of 2000. Election day was looming. It was a beautiful day. Picking apples, wandering through the trees, picking a pumpkin with my little girl. Then I talked to "Sully" and saw what he was trying to do, and is still doing, writing fairy tales about rabbits and a whole barnyard of his own characters. I was the senior editor for Access Internet Magazine, another kind of content farm, and I suddenly realized the connection between the mythological constructs of William Blake and the hierarchical order of the online, and therefore, real world. And more than that, what it might mean for a self-publisher of numerous, smaller, shorter, more digestible reads. In other words, making e-books, William Blake-style.

But, actually, the experiment in experiential literature all started,
also, with a pirate flag. That is really the crux of the whole thing. That was my first logo. The pirate flag.

The inquisitor: What? A pirate flag? What kind of Peter Pan fantasies are we talking about here?

McDaniel: That’s right, the medium is the message. The pirate flag is the crux of the whole thing.

The inquisitor: How so?

McDaniel: You aren’t listening … the pirate flag … the crux … the whole thing. Oh well, maybe I really should backtrack.

Inquisitor: Backtrack! We haven’t gotten anywhere yet.

McDaniel: Even in being still, we are always moving. Sometimes the truth will fly right past you.

Inquisitor: The truth, now, that’s it. You are some piece of work. Do you have a permit to hold this gathering here?

McDaniel: Permit? No. Everything is permitted in Mythville. As long as it has something to do with making a book and expressing oneself. It's all about letting go of all of our anxiety, somehow, in this new century.

Inquisitor: Still, I’m curious about the pirate flag.

McDaniel: OK, so there’s the election. I voted for Nader. Who knew? Then, this long period of a couple of weeks, then a month, then six weeks of nobody knowing who the hell is in charge anymore, right?

Then came a solar storm …

The inquisitor: A what?

McDaniel: A solar storm hit New England. I looked it up. Nobody believed me, except for a lady in a gas station pay station near the freeway in Andover.

The inquisitor: Saw what?

McDaniel: A lake of fire in the sky, over Lawrence. I thought the whole place was ablaze with lightning.

The inquisitor: You are insane.

McDaniel: Oh yes, it was there. I did research on what happened. Look it up yourself, a freak solar storm hit New England, the whole earth, really, sometime between the election and December 13, 2000. Apparently, it was the end of a 13-year cycle of unusual activity. My theory is that it sent vibrations turbulatin’ on into the very core of the earth.

Inquisitor (on the cell phone): Get me security. (Now writing things down in a little notebook). OK, so you say you saw a lake of fire in the sky over Lawrence. But what does that have to do with a pirate flag?

McDaniel: Well, after the Supreme Court had ruled to decide the election, I just broke loose. I wanted nothing to do with this country, or, any other. It was as if a bolt of lightning had briefly lit up every one of our institutions and revealed, for just one brief flash of X-ray, every one of our major institutions as faulty, frail and hopelessly corrupt. For me, looking at it from the dark, wintery, London-esque Mordor of Boston, one big, giant, monstrous … well … one big complete bogus ... Mythville.

The inquisitor: Now you are using it a different way. Won’t that confuse your audience?

McDaniel: Audience? At that point, I was just one guy with a blogger, then more, then more, starting at http://mythville.blogspot.com/. A voice crying out in the wilderness. So, as my world was coming apart, and I was determined to tap out of the system, especially creatively, in pursuit of this self-publishing, self-expressive dream, I decided I needed to network with like-minded people.

So, what I did was, I took the pirate flag, which I intended to give to my future-ex-father in law for Christmas, and I planted it on the front porch.

I wanted to signify to anyone who might get the code: Panic! Panic! It’s time to take action. It’s time to be a pirate.

The inquisitor: Then what happened?

McDaniel: My wife threatened divorce. My in-laws, Sicilian mob-style, tried to get me kicked out of our place there in North Andover. They called the cops. Stirred up the neighbors. Threatened to send thugs over to kick me out. Took the family car, a kind of wedding gift, away, leaving me wheeless. Once, when I had left the home, they snuck into the basement and pulled out all of the fuses, leaving the place completely dark. I guess they figured I would never be able to get the old place back up and running. In fact, I'm pretty damend good with matters electric. They called the landlord and said I was burning candles in the house and leaving wax all over the place, like some kind of creepy Vincent Price.

Inquisitor: Were there candles?

McDaniel: Yes, but I only burned them at dusk, as a ritual before more writing and blogging and so on. I was in mourning. Look, I'm not saying I wasn't getting a pretty weird. I was just expressing the anxiety and turbulance I was feeling all around me. For God's sake. It was the year 2000!

Inquisitor: Then what happened?

McDaniel: Well, some pretty cool people got curious about what I was up to, and started to come over to the house. I’m sure this sudden new type of gathering in the neighborhood only served to stir things up even more. By this time, the North Andover police really wanted my ass in a sling. One cop, a long-timer macho kid, who lived here all his life, came over, and asked me, after I smarted off about "search and seizure" and some such lunacy, he asked me if I was a lawyer. I said yes, I went to Harvard law school. It was true. What I didn’t say was it was only for one day to attend an Internet-related conference on MP3s and Napster. Anyway, I was obviously going head-to-head with the Gillette crate-packing mentality around there.
Anyway, that’s when I really started to meet the witches of Essex county, too. They would come over, hang out. I would play loud music and try to describe what, exactly, Mythville is. People from Darlene Torosian’s Salon in North Andover. In fact, she rented the house with her kids after I left. But we had designers, Webmasters, entrepeneurs, like-minded folk came over. This Reiki therapy trainee came over and practiced Reiki therapy on us. It was a real salon, Parisian style, and I was the Antone Mesmer, the Cagliostro. Or, at least one of them. It only lasted for a short while, though, a few weeks at the most ...

The Inquisitor: Why?

McDaniel: Well, I had decided to get out of there. The whole plan was to end up in Telluride,writing my tales from my heart-home, anyway. So with so many problems for me in the neighborhood, my pending divorce, and all of the loousy bitterness and stupidity that entails, I decided to leave, going back to my friends in the mountains of southwestern Colorado. From there, at about 9,500 feet in altitude, I launched the first incarnation of Mythville.org.

Then, I lived in Telluride for a year, then came back to New England, living in Ipswich this time, in order to clear up legal stuff related to the divorce. But right as I moved back, this time to Ipswich, Sept. 11 changed everything. I felt like I was right at the front here on the North Shore. Hence, the writing from that period is in a book of poetry I’ve just released, "Ipswich at War." It captures all of my written observations at that time.

Inquisitor: And then?

McDaniel: I moved to Haverhill because it was cheaper, setting up a small metamedia bookstore right there on the street. And, of course, I always put my pirate flag out on the window to attract like-minded people and ward away the foul spirits, too. Artists. Writers. Programmers. Scammers. Lunatics wandering that unwalled insane asylum called Haverhill. Perfect town for Mythville. Lot of Peter Pan fantasies floating around up and down the main old downtown quad. I even did a one-night performance of "William Blake in Cyberspace" at the Wingate Micro Theatah, and wrote a lot of all of the my current book material by drinking beer and bashing away on my laptop in the Irish bar downstairs. I loved that place. A writer’s place, that bar.

Inquisitor: Then what?

McDaniel: I almost starved. Trying to sell e-books and print-on-demand poetry is not, exactly, the stuff of commerce, I find. You can only go so far with a pirate flag in your shop window. Most people didn’t know what to make of Mythville. But that’s changing.

Inquisitor: Do you have a political party, a religious preference? You sound like one of those LaRue style crazies to me

I'm a Reformed Metaphysical Anarchist. Not entirely unlike a Rastafarian. Reformed because, actually, a monarchy would seem to be what we have here in this country. It's just a different kind of elitist tier system, that's all. Unfortunately, philosopher kings are currently in short supply as candidates. The public doesn't give a fuck about even the shadows flickering on the wall anymore. So until then, it's to thine own self be true, and hope everybody else eventually realizes the only actual political boundary, that of Gaia, is atmospheric in nature and moving, through space, on the moment at perilous speeds.

Inquisitor: OK, so what are you doing now.

McDaniel: Now I’ve learned how to create and sell a line of my own e-books and PODs via online Mythville. I’m encouraging my past contacts in publishing after all of these years to do the same. Now Mythville has become a community of links for self-publishers of all kinds. I have about a dozen authors, today in Phoenix and elsewhere, who are psyched about the idea. So much that they are using the same tools, mostly Lulu.com but also iuniverse.com, to create their own e-books and PODs in a cost-effective way. Then, all I do is post the link. It's a bookstore of links.

And thus, a quirky little beehive of like-minded souls grows.

Inquisitor: Would you look at my book?

McDaniel: Yes, of course. As William Blake wrote: The artist and oppressor are one.

With that, the press conference ended, as McDaniel turned, walked, and continued on his search on the road to Mythville.

http://mythville.blogspot.com
Mythville.com
Mythville.org

Mythville@yahoo.com

co-op marketing & partnerships � MarketingVOX

2004-06-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

co-op marketing & partnerships � MarketingVOX

WhenU Argues in Utah Anti-Spyware Court Hearing � MarketingVOX

2004-06-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

WhenU Argues in Utah Anti-Spyware Court Hearing � MarketingVOX

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?

2004-06-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?

Yahoo! News - Saint, Peace Seeker, Hero by Turns

2004-06-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - Saint, Peace Seeker, Hero by Turns

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter Crosses The NY Times' Line of 'Strict Neutrality' - by Daniel Forbes

2004-06-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter Crosses The NY Times' Line of 'Strict Neutrality' - by Daniel Forbes

2004-05-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

“Although it may not be apparent, everything is in order.”

~From "The Road to Mythville," by Douglas McDaniel

The Mythville Project

For better or worse, the first drafts in Douglas McDaniel's efforts in speculative non-fiction begin with an extended string of readings currently preserved at G21.net. "The Mythville Project" begins here.

The Bog in the Hole Where the Animals Fell

The Mythville Project Blossoms: Douglas McDaniel's special project begins an experiment in co(operative) publishing with a story that begins at The World's Magazine and leaps like a sprite across two Web sites. "The Bog in the Hole Where the Animals Fell" begins here.

Of Scrapple and Soul

A collection of new poems by Douglas McDaniel, author of "The Road to Mythville," contain a strong post-Sept. 11 edge. Examples of an upcoming book of poetry are now on view here.

The Kachina's Son

A new hypertext book by Douglas McDaniel, starting with the first chapter, "The Bog in the Hole Where the Animals Fell," begins here.

Ipswich in a Time of War

A new collection of poems by Douglas McDaniel, written since Sept. 11, 2001, for obvious reasons. Click Here.

Mythville Call and Response

Despite the rather clunky use of such techniques as spamming and other outrageous behavior, at least half of it accidental, Mythville has been getting a lot of positive response lately. Lit Myth Test.

Hot Stove League Means No Joy in Mythville

An upcoming collection of writings on baseball is getting an introduction with a new chapter about the New York Mets scout who discovered Nolan Ryan, Red Murff. Read all about it at No Joy In Mythville.

New Microsoft Reader eBooks Offered: "Kachina's Son" and "The Road to Mythville"

Part of a new offering, Mythville will trade two Microsoft Reader e-Books for your e-mail address. Please respond to mythville@yahoo.com and make sure you have downloaded the latest version of the reader at: Microsoft eBook Reader Download.

"All is Unfair in Media Arts And War"

Mythville's latest offering to G21.net, "Media Arts in War," has won high praise for low pay from its editor, Rod Amis: "Sporadic but consistent contributor DOUGLAS MCDANIEL, who produces our 'Mythville Project' feature, never ceases to amaze me. When he plays to his strength, gonzo journalism, he produces some of the finest work it's been my pleasure to feature in The World's Magazine. That has never been more true than this week. I encourage you to read his piece, 'North Shore Art in War.' It's probably the best writing I've read on The Aftermath thus far.". G21.net.

'William Blake in Cyberspace' makes G21.net's 300th edition

For some reason, Rod Amis at G21.net puts up with this insanity, "What's now proven was once only imagined." Perhaps because he helped to inspire this piece, which will be one of the final chapters of a new book, "Glasnost Lost." G21.net.

'William Blake in Cyberspace' Is Comic Strip Hero

Unheralded comic genius Cal Rhodes has rendered Douglas McDaniel, aka, "William Blake in Cyberspace," as a tragic comic strip figure. Plastic miniature replicas soon to follow at Avatars R Us. Savage Pilgrims.

"The Road to Mythville" available at iUniverse.com

A new collection of poems by Douglas McDaniel is available as a print-on-demand product at the iUniverse.com bookstore. Just plug "Road to Mythville" into the title search engine, and everything seems pretty apparent after that.

'Too Many Horses,' and Mythville Verse

A very recent batch of poems, written in Ipswich and Concord, Massachusetts, during a time of war are unveiled at the usual Mythville suspects, Kachina's Son. Released as drafts with a special nod of thanks to the elegant and swift bards of Concord and Ipswich, where real poetry lives and breathes each day.

Mythinformation

Blog Shred Dot Calm: Advocate Interactive News

Lessons in Social Dysfunctions: What's Wrong with These Politicians? Are They Completely Insane?

Books on Demand

Mythville

Bards of Mythville | Phoenix, AZ | Alternative / alt-country / post-punk topical techno poesy | Music, Lyrics, Songs, and Videos | ReverbNation

Mythville (Douglas McDaniel) | MySpace

'Capitalism' Foiled, Again: Hollywood Video becomes new Last Picture Show

Mythville MetaMedia - Lulu.com

Kindle This: Decade long e-book quest is print-on-demand cautionary tale

Get the latest book by Douglas McDaniel

From Outside the Walls of the DNC

A Robert Earl Keen, Jr. Sense of Irony

New Media to Shred: Rose Hill Drive's 'Moon is the New Earth'

1 Giant Leap for Mankind

Last Train to Mythville : AZ IMC

Google Search: Mythville

Mythville publishes another: Glasnost Lost

New Media Shredder

G21 - MY GLASS HOUSE: "Building Character"

Ipswich at War by Douglas McDaniel

Yahoo! News - U.S. Uses Lethal Aircraft to Try to Break Sadr

Sea Lion Records

An interview with Douglas McDaniel, publisher, Mythville.com

23 Roads to Mythville by Douglas McDaniel (Book) in Books > Fiction

G21 - AMERICAN DREAMS - "1000 Points of Bin Laden"

Tenebris: Mythville

TownOnline.com - North Andover Citizen - Arts & Lifestyle

Google Search: "Douglas McDaniel"

Google Search: "Mythville"

Backflip Publisher: Webgeist | Folder: The Road to Mythville

blogdex - weblog diffusion - mythville.blogspot.com

index

blogdex - weblog diffusion - mythville.blogspot.com

TownOnline.com - North Andover Citizen - Arts

Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness.

Mythinformation For Self-Publishing Revolution :: Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness.

"There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats." -- H.L. Mencken

The Mythville Chronicle

A Self-Interview with Self-Publisher and Self-Publishing Promoter, Douglas McDaniel

co-op marketing & partnerships � MarketingVOX

WhenU Argues in Utah Anti-Spyware Court Hearing � MarketingVOX

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?

Yahoo! News - Saint, Peace Seeker, Hero by Turns

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter Crosses The NY Times' Line of 'Strict Neutrality' - by Daniel Forbes

"There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats."
-- H.L. Mencken