Wisdom

James Cook is Doing Amazing Work on Substack

If you’ve been listening to me for awhile you’ve heard me interview James Cook a couple of times, over the years. He’s a wonderful human being and a hell of a researcher. He’s also a ‘real’ journalist, in that he’s published all over, including Business Insider.

That professional expertise is apparent when reading his fantastic website/social media presence as Led Zep News. However, one can go deeper down the rabbit hole because Mr. Cook publishes very precise, source rich, and expanded in-depth articles for your pleasure and education, on Substack.

Substack is a site in which writers and journalists can publish directly to their audience without being throttled/limited by any kind of authority/boss. It’s a good thing. This in particular is wonderful.

Want to know everything about the $200,000 robbery at the Drake back in 1973 (seen in the Song Remains the Same movie)? Well strap in, because James got all the FBI files about the robbery, the case notes, etc. Super interesting.

It’s $5/month to get deep insightful, intelligent, content about the workings (and playings) of the best rock band in history.

This is a pure fan post. There has been no quid pro quo with James. This is something I’ve wanted to for awhile. Listen to the interviews and decide if you would like to hear more about this stuff.

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The Simple Cup of Truth will Change Your Life

Hey there, handsome! Do you love coffee, tea, hot cocoa, etc. but hate slurping scalding hot liquid from your blistered, cupped hands? Dude, I got you! I have a device which will revolutionize the liquid slurping experience.

Behold The Simple Cup of Truth! That’s right, “cup”. It holds the liquid you wish to consume for you, allowing you to use your hands for other things, like shooing away bears.

Allow me to explain. You’ll notice that the “cup” is comprised of two parts joined at two points. The first is the actual “cup” part of the “cup”, by which I mean the cylinder. The perceptive among you may have noted that if one were to pour liquid into a cylinder, it would simply fall through and soil the floor. Guess what, motherfucker? This cylinder has a bottom! The ‘bottom’ of the cup keeps the liquid from spilling out, bringing us to the showstopper.

Attached at two points to the outside of the cylinder you will see a thin hemisphere of baked clay perpendicular to the cylinder wall. Using your thumb and forefingers you can lift the “cup” to your lips and slurp like a gentleperson. Welcome to the aristocracy!

as an additional boon to humanity I have applied positive messages on the outer surface of the cylinder, intended to enlighten and inform. “Music is Good” is a truth both profound and sublime. The Heart of Markness podcast logo is a powerful talisman against nogoodniks and the occasional caribou.

Buy enough to make an igloo of truth in which to repose. Merch of Markness is the place.

My Heart of Markness Interview with the Author of Searching for Jimmy Page

I talk with author Christy Alexander Hallberg about her novel Searching For Jimmy Page, which I’ve read and is wonderful. She talks about visiting Headley Grange, Bron Yr Aur, and other meccas for Zep fans, and how they colored her character Luna’s odyssey. Seriously, this book is awesome.

robert anton wilson historical illuminatus chronicles

Robert Anton Wilson’s final trilogy sees new life.

Robert Anton Wilson’s Last Trilogy

Gets A Renaissance

The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles is back in print. I first read The Earth Will Shake (the first book of the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles) in 1992. It was great. It takes place in the 18th Century, and feature ancestors of the main characters of the Illuminatus Trilogy. We have Celines, Malatestas, Moons, as well as amazing cameos by Edmund Burke, George Washington, Tom Paine, and my favorite… de Selby. A fictional character who exists in another fictional world appears (in footnotes) in the second book of the trilogy, The Widow’s Son.

Robert Anton Wilson is a criminally underappreciated writer, in my opinion. I think one reason is that his books are spread throughout the entire bookstore/library. He has written fiction, sci fi, philosophy, literary criticism, plays, humor, treatises, books about sex, drugs, the occult… he’s all over the road. He was a friend and colleague of Timothy Leary, a scholar of James Joyce, Aleister Crowley, Buckminster Fuller, Richard Feyman… he was just as at home speaking of non-locality in quantum mechanics as he was about DMT vs LSD, or the number of mathematical puns are in Finnegan’s Wake.

He was also hilarious. He is a wonderful Hermetic gatekeeper to the realms of all the above. His Illuminatus Trilogy (written with Robert Shea in the late 60’s/early 70’s) contained every extant conspiracy theory of which Wilson was aware. It was Tom Robbins in hyperspace and it will change you forever if you read it, in a good way.

Here’s a nice taste of what Robert Anton Wilson (or Uncle Bob) has to offer.

Listen, I think your life will be enriched, profoundly, by reading some good old Robert Anton Wilson, and The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles are the smoothest entrance into his world I can imagine. Bob passed in 2005 but his daughter Christina has founded a publishing company, Hilaritas Press. This will be used to reissue Bob’s catalog. Getting these books will support the legacy of a great man. Give them a shot.