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http://www.cenedra.com/twinpeaks/Episode19/pic40.jpg

I’m gonna try to re-create this in Illustrator in the next couple days.

If only it were that simple. I right now only have 1 year of undergraduate under my belt - and from an art school no less. Shit, I gained more college credit in highschool doing AP coursework.

Heh, more proof that higher education only ruins great minds! I was under the impression that you had a Bachelor’s, but whatever… I love your site and read it often.

The TV thing would be awesome if you can get hooked up. But if not you could definitely get yourself into academia if you wanted (i.e. if you could tolerate the BS). I’m not necessarily advocating it unless you need it before people will listen to you, but I’m encouraging you if you decide that it’s something you want/need.

any occult tv i’ve seen is based either on evoking hysterical fear in contestants (fear, scariest places on earth), or using technology and materialist skepticism to “prove” something (ghost hunters). but it’s all the same tired “haunted house” shit, framed as “fear vs rationality.” fuck all that.

Carlos, I think you’re totally right on. The story is all there based on how im already approaching it, and the niche that this would be satisfying is totally different from how any tv shows, etc cover this stuff right now. I’m going to seriously figure out how to pitch this idea somewhere. But in the meantime, I’m simply going to start doing it. The “Messages from Beyond” blog addition will be my first step in showing that there is a big interest, and proving to the powers that be that i have a sufficient “platform” to stand on.

i want an open-ended occult show that will look at anything, and be truly open-minded about it. i want to see a tool interview, “black magic babies”, and some teenagers showing off their local spook spot in the same show. i want irrationality and enthusiasm (that’s why i’m here). i want jung, vallee, keel, fort, pkd, the old “occult potluck”.

fuck, why isn’t there a jung/vallee show already? that’d be nuts cos it’d have ufos and ghosts but using jungian psychology as the frame. like, are we being punk’d by god? or is it the djinn? or valis?

“is it real?”

“well that’s really not the point. what’s the story?”

“are you serious? i can’t tell.”

“good.”

sort of like “morgan spurlock meets the mothman”

you’re an intellectual, but you’re also a hard-assed occult investigator. you talk to the people, you get your hands dirty, eat the cookies, spend the night to see for yourself, and cuss a lot.

money in the bank, dude. you just need to find your “bank” and punk em. hell, try mtv, i reckon they’ll have another go if you brand it right. people are hanging for it.

please mtv, pimp my ghost!

(in the absence of money, just do it anyway. the “self-made man” story always sells. all you need is a camcorder and a journal, and maybe a van and a laptop if you want to be all fancy about it. it’ll work out. back yourself.)

so that’s my advice: don’t listen to your stupid friends who tell you how untenable your ingenious idea is.

Well my problem is that people are telling me to do it, but I don’t know how.

In general, a phd program would give you (barely) enough funding to explore your research interests for awhile, plus some extra resources. But you’ll have to put up with 2-3 years of coursework first.

If only it were that simple. I right now only have 1 year of undergraduate under my belt - and from an art school no less. Shit, I gained more college credit in highschool doing AP coursework.

Word!!! Every time I’ve had a good idea on what to do with my life, I couldn’t keep it to myself. Then it got shot down.

Ha, I was just thinking this morning about what I could do to earn money and not have to rely on working full time on someone else’s payroll. Ideally I’d like to get paid to do creative things. I decided I should brainstorm a whole list of ideas of things I could do for money; maybe no one thing would be enough to sustain me, but a whole bunch of little things could (e.g., writing, teaching violin lessons, maybe getting paid for an Internet radio show?, translating, assembling furniture, etc. etc. etc.)

heh, seriously, tho’, i used to really want to do this project where i’d basically drive around collecting peoples’ stories. my idea was to have a set-up where i’d basically let people tell whatever kind of story they wanted, and archive it all, so that if aliens ever came to earth after we went extinct, there’d be this amazing archive of oral history. it was going ton be called the ‘lost horizon’ project, after the book of that title, in which a group of monks in tibet create a sanctuary for all of human knowledge so that when civilization collapsed, our music & literature & philosophy wouldn’t.

so, i got some people together and actually had a couple of meetings about this, but the people with whom i was involved essentially decided it would be a logistical nightmare and it fizzled out. when that happened, i gave up on the idea, ’cause i figured if my friends weren’t into it, it probably wouldn’t get enough support in general.

but now, of course, someone is doing just that:

http://www.npr.org/programs/watc/features/storyprojectarchives.html

so that’s my advice: don’t listen to your stupid friends who tell you how untenable your ingenious idea is.

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/cswr/index.html

Harvard has some interesting and innovative programs. Harvard is typically well funded to do just about anything/everything (of course with the usual Crimson baggage). However, the div school is one of the poorer of the schools (competing with the ed school for last place). Speaking of which, the ed school (or other education programs) might be a good place for you to look, if you can package your interests in the right way (i.e. work the epistemological angle, “how do we know what we know?”). You would definitely be an “interesting” enough candidate to get noticed.

In general, a phd program would give you (barely) enough funding to explore your research interests for awhile, plus some extra resources. But you’ll have to put up with 2-3 years of coursework first.

Oh, and composing simple melodies and tunes for videogames (particularly RPG’s) would be pretty amazing too.