I am not sure how I found my way to reading and “collecting” Clive Barker`s books, but I suppose my bookshelf bears testimony of a certain consistency in my shopping for books – either Gnostic and esoteric subjects (becoming more and more eclectic) or books by such authors as Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (the latter two having co-operated on a peculiar little thing called Good Omens, so I really should have two of it),
In fact, in terms of Barker and Pratchett who are quite odd combinations, I have almost the complete works.. except they are paperbacks, far from mint condition.. and read more times than I can actually account for.

I was planning to read a lot of serious things,but then I got distracted by the arrival of Clive Barker`s Coldheart Canyon in the shelves at some store I would never suspect of peddling such goods (and which I am sure wouldn`t peddle such goods, if they could read the book.. but thankfully, such people as exercise censorship here does not possess the linguistic skills of figuring out anything about the contents of foreign language paperbacks and kindred goods.. except if the covers somehow betray their content.. such as Jamie The Naked Cook or somesuch..).. I am far too distracted a fellow to write a review of the book, and I have only traversed 600 pages of it, so I couldn´t do it justice.
The storyline is far more Gothic than the preceeding books Sacrament and Galilee..Hollywood must be familiar to Barker since he has been at hand as director and creative advisor for many cinematic productions, some of which were produced out of the blueprint of some story or other made by him (if only Philip K. Dick could have had as good creative controll over his legacy..)..but Hollywood is only actually embodied by the unfortunates who trespass into the forbidden..the most central character being Todd Pickett, Hearthrob, who have been talked into plastic surgery that goes terrible wrong…
So goes the journey into the shelter of the wildernesses exterior and interior, in a hidden canyon, in a dream palace..to the discovery of a terrible legacy from the Golden Age of Cinema and beyond..
It is not the best Barker novel I have read, it is the most recent, and the fact that he is so productive is reassuring, since I find I come back to reading his books again and again..

I found Jacob Holm Lupo`s hidden-away (and apparently neglected) Diary tonight…
Been following the white.willow.net site for
some time, trying to keep track of the developements of the group.

I´ve searched the net a bit for the combinatin gnostic+blog and came by
Jordan Stratford`s weblog,
I corresponded with Jordan, who hails from Vancouver and have accomplished quite a lot
while I have not in the years gone by, also in the Multimedia/Graphic design business –
for a period in the mid-90´s and onwards, but we lost touch.

In Norway it is considered clever to be able to communicate with
foreigners in the English language. It proves, more or less, that
you had an education, is media-savvy and probably didn`t sleep
through your years in school as well. Our grammar is terrible,
but our vocabulary, however small, is usually correct.
I remember passing by a sign at the Oslo docks saying “Fresh Rakes”
, underneath the sign were a perfectly normal selection of freshly
boiled prawns, the small salmon-pink variety of it we have around the
North Sea… and it brought a smile to my face. I didn´t mean to be
smug about it, it just came out that way….
now,many years later.. I found the webspot dedicated to
Japanese Engrish……
I thought it was fun, don`t ask me why.. 🙂

I am 32% Geek

You probably work in computers, or a history deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the “normal” crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing.

Take the Geek Test at fuali.com

It has always caused a particular kind of unease in me whenever the faceless majority

has deigned it righteous and on time to proclaim another universal.

With the advent of a soft and cuddly authoritarianism presenting its credentials as being the necessary controlling agent, for the common good –

thinking men and women may indeed find themselves in a predicament worse than a rodent in a glass cage.

If he or she fail to conform to the norm, and even show signs of resistance to the newfound memetic drug being administered in the spiritual equivalent of Kool Aid; all flavour and no nuitritional value – You may take it for granted it is gloriously broadcast to all the world, and particularly directly to the dull synapses of the Mass-man. Having wasted prose on this nervous reaction to the self-evident truths of the crowd, I have assassinated my own character. Consequence is estimated to be infinitessmally small – yet it has presented greater minds than mine with a bill which is well above their ability to pay. One of the debtors, whose fate you may scrutinize and decide you want to join the barking choir after all, and conform now without regret and circumstance – were Soren Kierkegaard. A Nation may be trusted in doing nothing else, but butchering its own prophets,poets and artists…As predictable a treatment is the post mortem installment of the embalmed ghost into whatever derelict mausoleum serves as the national treasury of culture and learning.

Before being deterred thusly, Soren Kierkegaard exercised his human right to dissect the particular reality construct..the so-called world and everything, the beguiling lie which is whispered into the infants ears before they are equipped to hear anything else…

Soren Kierkegaard wrote on this particular topic the following:

There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on its side.There is another view of life; which holds that wherever the crowd is, there is untruth, so that, for a moment to carry the matter out to its farthest conclusion, even if every individual possessed the truth in private, yet if they came together into a crowd (so that “the crowd” received

For a crowd is an abstraction, which does not have hands; each single individual, on the other hand, normally has two hands, and when he, as a single individual, lays his two hands on Caius Marius, then it is the two hands of this single individual, not after all his neighbor’s, even less – the crowd’s, which has no hands.

(Soren Kierkegaard: The Crowd is Untruth at Christian Classics Ethereal Library )

The same site has a lot of english translations of Kierkegaards works in its archives.

Since I got myself “online” , Internet has been my second bookshelf.

There really are thousands of books available in digital format , so-called etexts/eBooks – but it is not always easy to find material – so I thought

I would share some resources I personally use a lot.

First of all, Project Gutenberg has survived 31 years, since it was begun

in 1971 when Michael Hart began scanning manuscripts into electronic

text format.. since then it has pioneered the literary history of the Internet,

enlightening thousands of students with internet access but no fat wallets.

Gutenberg delivers literary classics held to be within the “Public Domain” after international standards of intellectual property law, therefore not every book you are likely to find in a “real life” library. The formats range from plain 8-bit ascii text which all desktop computers can process, to newer formats for diverse mediums, includding Pocket PC`s etc.

The Online Books page

is one such resource, in all my surfing on the Net I haven`t found any site

so comprehensive… The New Listings is interesting for anyone who have already made themselves acquianted with what is available in the main Index.

As you might suspect, I am interested in the diversity of religious

and philosophical ideas, not only in terms of history, but also throughout

geography and culture.. A good place to start in order to find general

and specialized material is The Internet Sacred Text Archive

A specific Christian literature site can be found at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

The more heretically inclined could always surf down to

The Gnostic Society Virtual Library… or to the Alchemy Virtual Library

Yesterday I went to the movies with my brother, his wife and her daughter.

We saw Star Wars II.. forgot the title.. nevermind.Fortunately I am still

so childish (or gullible) to enjoy a good fable, but the well appears to

be drying out for George Lucas. Apparently there is a covert narrative of

events in the world the last few years..but is no kind of epic drama of

the soul.It was the so-called action bits which were the most rewarding….

But it was good to get out of the house and do something with

my brother and his folk for once…

The Gnostic Friends Network has a Quotations

section which I discovered just now, and some of it I found to be very interesting and inspiring… especially since so many “provocateurs” and truely modern thinkers are represented there. James Joyce, in his Ulysses, offers the following pearl :

History… is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

I also never dreamed of seeing this from Soren Kierkegaard (in Either/Or. 1843):

The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam

population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse.”

.

The particular quote of M.C.Escher explains a lot about his artwork, I think:

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it’s in my basement… let me go upstairs and check.