Exemplary Jackass || Neurotic Nihilism II.3

This is a[nother] piece which is dual purposed. Part of a complete dissertation on Green Day’s album Warning and piece for Neurotic Nihilism which is still in the process of being scribed. While the entire dissertation is going to inevitably be included in the NN Lexicon, it’s written so as to stand alone at the same time. This small multifaceted writing has regards to the song ‘Jackass’ from the album, though it’s minimally touched on here given the point is the idea of the jackass rather than the song alone, wherein the full writing about the song contains information more pertinent elsewhere. This could have fit after NN III.3: A Track Trinity however given it’s primarily regarding a film’s depiction of a jackass, it fits in NN.II at II.3 as is currently being collected in said fashion.

Napoleon Dynamite is a slacker film in the complete (and touted) absence of point. A benign film, humorous in its representation of the monotonous life of one bored burnout in the midst of bumfuck nowhere suburban small-town banality. 

Napoleon’s Uncle Rico, a recurring main character in the movie, is an exemplary jackass, and in the way which comedy is horror in laughing guise: a failed athlete, his entire life revolves around being unable to move on from an injury which cost him big league possibility. Devastated, as it’s what his life hinged on, but not so ultimately unrecoverable. 

Despite displaying a genuine albeit malformed entrepreneurial career, his plot in the film is an attempt to build procure a working Time Machine in order to fix his unwanted life. Rico becomes the Jackass with the trauma never leaving and creeping into his whole livelihood. The Body Keeps The Score and we are solipsistic in misery…

His entire persona being not what is but what even decades after high school sports, in his mind should be. 

“Gosh!”

High school never ends…

Tune in, Drop Out: How? Neurotic Nihilism I.1.6

What is ‘tuning in and dropping out’, and is such completely possible? The old adage of ‘politics are for people who can’t run their own lives,’ is seemingly self-contradictory. Maybe lest one lives on Sentinal Island… but even with such an instance of seclusion it’s only based on external politics that prohibits colonialism in their regard. Notwithstanding the Sentinal people undoubtedly have their own internal politics within their fascinatingly insular culture. 

“Dropping out,” the touted Timothy Leary ideal seems a call more for decentralized utilitarian use of product. Chaos magic promotion. The last ropes sold as Karl Marx once fetishized, not to make a necessarily literal but in the least metaphorical string that may end in being a noose. Conceptually it’s controlled chaos for internal interruption. “Music for the mind,” as a provocative noise artist once explained it to Tom Metzger on his cable TV Race & Reason series. A mesh, collage of contradictions melded together. 

Very postmodern; all thanks to Savitri Devi, the Dadaists and Beatnicks with their addictions and overall jive of insanity superfluous. 

“Are we not part of this world?” as absurdly stupid it’s suffering can and/or may be?

Even a secluded hermit had a start in some social part. 

Nietzsche scribed in Human, All Too Human that, “the shortness of human life leads to many assertions concerning the qualities of man,” however, undeniable is the observation that it is largely a social ape; and with the current age of disconnected connection, dropping out is almost as it would seems form of slow suicide. Apathy encroaches nonetheless in the inevitable fugue. 

***

Destination reached too soon

Only to be gone as to lose

End in rear, unable to veer

Can’t even see if it’s possible here. 

Pray, pity, pleasure

love, laugh, love

Stagnate, serenade, shoot

Unison stomping boots

all to plead, means to loot

Utilitarian is a fetish; application a small dish

Moments of Might

Fawn, not right or flight

if it could only be a last night

Decay In The Plot

Coagulate

Stuck up, drop out

Cellar of data—

Decay on full-frontal display,

What’s in a name?

Rising up, tearing down;

right as whatever the goal,

trips in an inevitable plot-hole.

No one actually wants a clown

Crabbily holding one down

Rejecting projection

Internal imperfection 

Denominations of Satanism: Response to Joseph Rose

Long has the debate over the label of Satanist been argued amongst those who prescribe it to themselves as to the individual validity of the concept. From there Church of Satan holding out it’s place like an occult Ayn Rand Institute, a place to point to, to the online spaces on platforms like discord perpetuating varying opinions in line with what LaVey set up, and diverging or even denying. So with that the query posed by Joseph Rose of the Hail Satan Podcast who runs his own independent congregation of Satanists located out of Philadelphia, Satanic Delco; as well as his own project of articulating Satanism called Outsider Satanism. What he calls a denomination of the supposed religion. While there is another argument to be had whether Satanism can be constituted religious, that is irrelevant to if it is, can there be denominations? What creates a valid denomination for an “alien elite”?

On a Sunday Witching Hour YouTube livestream the all around apostate took in voicemails to answer inquiries, I sent one in regarding the concept of denominations of Satanism, how and why his idea would be valid as such. Prompted by this he finished an essay with his opinions on the topic, after which the inquiry was opened up a bit more within sphere’s he can be found within. 

From Joseph Rose:

We all know that many religions do have various denominations that all recognize a common central text or philosophy, despite whatever other differences they may have.

1. Is there something specific and unique to Satanism that somehow makes denominations completely impossible, unlike every other religion?

2. In your view, what conditions would need to be met for there to be a valid denomination of Satanism?

My response:

1. If we’re gonna go to the core sure I’d say denominations are impossible but only in the broad sense. The denominations would be in individual application and articulation, at least if it’s philosophically based in LaVey it would seem. I don’t think there’s room for a religion or denominations in the institutional or organizational sense with the concept of radical egoism with an alien elite, whatever that actually means as it would seem the ones who do end up doing that like yourself end up more often than not lambasted. Validly or invalidly it’s sort of just a dumb game of verbiage. 

If the base is LaVey, fine, but there’s always room for expansion on those ideas that’s sort of the whole point of it, being adaptable to the circumstances. In theory. Wherein you (Joseph) say it becomes religion is the application, “thought and action” fulfilled so to say. Maybe. Though I’m not sure if that’s just living or being religious, I guess it’s a differentiation in verbiage. 

What would be the base in Satanism? Satan? Which is a personification of what? The individual’s personally chosen archetype to align literally or anthropomorphically? Veneration of something can only go so far, the Process Church venerated Satan in their malformed cosmology where they Satanists? Some claimed the title with their own philosophical interpretations, some of which are not all too dissimilar from LaVey (though they also lived on the same street for a stretch of time lol, so who knows overlap). 

Individuation and articulation, that’s what would do it. While he left and shifted ideas, Diabolus Rex as far as I can tell isn’t discredited in spite of his more mystical and theistic concepts, he’s still allocated the title by the apparent arbiters. 

2.The valid conditions I think have at least a good idea for a base: the veneration of Satan and at least The Satanic Bible or maybe another form of understanding it in the archetype that would lend to psychological and conceptual credibility. So it would ultimately come back to individual application and articulation. Outsider Satanism is a cool personal glimpse into your microcosm of it, but it’s the same as CoS has done for decades with a different wording to it so it makes it seem a nuisance for them. It makes sense from a completely disconnected vantage point, cynically at least where all this argumentation comes from and where it’s counterproductive

The whole issue with verbiage is apparent all around I mean just say the word community around CoS people and it’s abhorrent of a concept, though it’s what would accurately label their niches whether connected on the basis of their identity as Satanists or not. The human animal as social is acknowledged but when it comes to the terminology it gets very, stupidly, puritanical.

End of Response

For more on the matter see my own thoughts more in depth on Denominations of Satanism. Also see the times I’ve interviewed Joseph or been mentioned on his podcast here and here. 

Mask Mentality: Scary Organ Grinder || Neurotic Nihilism III.3

A scary mask, organ grinder and the malicious mirror. 

The Lord of the Flies is a classic tale telling the story of a stranded class of adolescents survival on a remote island. Symbolism regarding and begging questions to features of human behavioral science purveys the book quite explicitly. Of the most notable and significant pieces of iconography delegated to the reader is that of the Mask donned by the boys rallying figure and antagonist to poor Piggy— Jack— and leeway for luridly Darwinistic stanzas creating the effective narrative, solidifying it as a classic story. 

Iconography of the mask marks the human and uncanny. A known entity to a mysterious external consciousness, mirror neurons perception is manipulated; Observational intuition [empathy] becoming obfuscated; known into uncharted territory—  something inexplicably unsettling instilling unease. Fear. 

1. Scary Mask

Long known for generally liminal aesthetics and uncanny renditions of Mundane Extremes in the online world, and genre-bending scores of pop-metal collages the artist Poppy enacts this in the character she explores and deploys for her art. Describing it in her 2018 collaborative work with the band FEVER 333 on the song Scary Mask: 

“I wear my Scary Mask when I’m afraid I don’t belong

 You can’t read my brain until it’s off,

 Not coming off, not coming off…”

As the verse goes, should it be removed, the illusion as well as delusion is killed. Like how sunglasses alter external perception, so does a mask. Literally or metaphorically. 

Due to added social effects of the mask and personal experience being altered to the wanted, or attempted purveying message, outward projection to protect and reject what would lift the mask becomes the actuality. 

“M-A-S-K-Am-I-OK?” she strictly asks. Masks are worn but kept even in spite of hating the mask. While one might, “never take it off,” as a defense mechanism, it is an active form of induced dissociation. 

2. Organ Grinder

Adorned because, supposedly, “you cannot handle” the internal uneasy conscious entity in the mirror. When donned, it is for personal security. Delusion may be an incorrect term of phrase as it isn’t a farce so often; rather, specific qualities already latent to a person. Allowing for alterations nonetheless, the mask is there so the farce is and isn’t. 

An act, though much interaction is already a performance, that may be forgotten is only a performance. ‘Fake-it-till-you-make-it’ self-nurturing. 

“I hate what I have become to escape what I hated being…”

The mask is a freedom, at least in theory. Insofar as application, realistically, just as it is a boundary for security against others, it can easily lock one into place as it is so black and white. 

You or me, as well as me or myself. 

Marilyn Manson’s song from Portrait of An American Family sonically symbolizing this idea with added regard. 

“Calliopenis envy from your daddy

 You’re not gonna hear what he don’t want to hear

 What I say, disgusts him

 He wants to be me and that scares him…”

Based on envy to be some ideal. Again, fake it till you make it. Genuine as it may be, it is still a narrow mold one is forced into by themself. Scaring others with the perceived concept of unrestricted existence all the while pigeonholing oneself into a specific module. Or attempting to, at least. 

Online investigator and Marilyn Manson anthropologist Forever Dirt made a noteworthy observation in the first of his Fundamentally Loathsome God of Fuck-deep-dive project, that, the mask is rather a making of fear; of insecurity and vulnerability…

3. A Mask Of My Own Face

With one aspect or portion of persona given full front stage autonomy, enters a Lemon Demon now. 

Tracks which are memetic in the complete sense of the first four letters of the term’s connotation on the World Wide Web typically; A Mask of My Own Face is an absurdist acknowledgment of the whole dissociative enactment. 

“I’d wear it on Thanksgiving and I’d laugh in the parade 

 At all the people hissing, knowing I’m the one they hate

 And at the big finale I would tear my face away

 And smile as they grip their own and try to do the same

 I look into my eyeholes and what do I see?

 Look into my eyeholes and what do you see?

 A handsome motherfucker, motherfucking looking back at me

 A mask of my own face

 I’d wear that…”

Mask so uncanny it is indistinguishable from the mysterious entity of consciousness that always is there in reality. Well, an intensified portion at least. Unstable and unreliable, yet wholly undeniable. 

***

Dissociation,

free association

Intention:

set symptom

Static,

stagnant modem

Monolithic Misunderstandings || Neurotic Nihilism II.2.2

 

Laying in the midst of rubble, encapsulated in the world’s largest Brutalist tomb built atop the old Chernobyl power plant is the infamous Elephant’s Foot. A mass of pure radioactivity. A human creation. Bob Ross would say of it, a, “happy accident,” as it was not an intentional invention. It’s never so cut and clear. 

The Elephant’s Foot is to the real world what the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is: a creation by an intelligent consciousness that has no actual explanation for its spot in the universe when others stumble upon it. Radioactive decay ensures the Foot won’t be around forever, but high is the likelihood of that process outlasting the human gene altogether. Making a hunk for any possible future intelligences to scour the Earth before it gets engulfed by the sun to find; A Mass without meaning. 

Ominous is the choir in Also Sprach Zarathustra incorporated to accompany the existentialist film. Kubrick uses the most vocal moments in the number, in a way that could be seen as akin to hidden radiation when the neurosis of lack of understanding on the cosmic and personal level— though that is more of a stretching connection albeit, and would rather only make sense in hindsight to the film’s release and the moon missions being the former then the latter in historical sequence. The magnitude of what the Elephant’s Foot is to our species is rather trivial and meaningless to any other; which isn’t to imply nonhuman organisms do not feel effected from and are not affected by radiation, an awareness of something different exists but exactly what is unsure, like with the apes (and later homo-genus apes) Monolith in 2001 at the ‘Dawn of Man’.

It is possible the Monolith to be like the Voyager vehicles we launched, devices for exploration of just how far a species could send at least one thing rather than going only to attempt to find other life. Differential in that however as Voyager includes its Golden Record of the Earth (at least according to our species perspective) whereas the Monolith is merely there, obfuscating without any direct imposition or anything. It just is as it can be perceived: there. Meaning is by perception, what exactly can be perceived from an accidental hunk of radiation or traveling pillar?

One has meaning because we made it— literally— the other not so. Flip it around and it’s meaningless in that the meaning is subjective to the perception. Into new life or regular death, it’s there all by making and misunderstanding that maybe we can’t at a certain point… 

A Track Trinity || Neurotic Nihilism III.2

Originally written during the Nimrod time period and titled Black Eyeliner, change of phrase and it became the third track on their next and sixth studio album Warning, Church On Sunday was rechristened. 

Catchy as it is, at least in my opinion the demo from the Nimrod era is better than the concluded track; but what it evolved into fit the theme and jive of Warning whereas Black Eyeliner would not— it went from a ballad type entity in the same vein as that of Wilhelm Fink or Brutal love, to the energy found on later songs on the album like Fashion Victim or Waiting. 

“Bloodshot deadbeat and lack of sleep/ Making your bleed tears down your face/ Leaving traces of mistakes…”

Some slight deviations, depending on time and place in the two songs. Respectively it’s the same hook. Where Black Eyeliner’s verse was reworked into Church On Sunday, Kill Your Friends by frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s side project The Longshot took it and rewrote it for the chorus. 

Expressed in an its own new light each iteration is a form of longing. As established on the album, it is more of an optimistic delivery, even, “if you live with me I’ll die for you and this compromise,” however cynically, “‘trust’ is a dirty word that comes from such a liar,” yet even within that so long as there’s a hint of some mutual faith there’s as the closing song of the album Macy’s Day Parade says, a, “sized dream of hope.” Stripped to its demo, the imbued variation of this longing is that of Saudade, a more melancholically melodic nostalgia for something so seemingly in sight— grasp— but ultimately forever beyond the time of day. Kill Your Friends is what would seem to be a similar case within this as Grimes’ song ‘My Name Is Dark’ is:

“Heaven’s making rent

 There’s a vacancy for me and all my friends

 The end of days are on their way

 Who needs eulogies?

 When you’ve got your loved ones 

 And everyone’s depressed

 Party in the morgue tonight

 Everything’s gonna be alright

 And we’ll be singing…”

In other words as stated a few lines later in the lyrics of this (as of currently final) iteration: “Fuck the world, it’s judgement day.” Affirming this confirmation bias with a hint of permeating mortality salience throughout. Long story short, it forms a Trinity within the genus of the sonic endeavors of Billie Joe Armstrong, and encapsulates a different aspect of condition that makes sense to neurotic nihilism for all the aforementioned reasons here.

***

This is actually a small bit from a larger, still being written breakdown of Warning, the We Are Chaos of Green Day.