There are some who say that Mr. Crowley was all a fraud very good at selling an image and idea. A sort of turn of the century Anton LaVey. Disappointed with Theosophy and other pagan pursuits Aleister Crowley took it a few steps further. Just like in a later generation Anton LaVey decided to take the self-centered “Me” movement to an absurd level with his Church of Satan and people took it seriously and he made a pile of money and had lots of fun.


The question is did he really believe in it, or was he just very good at making others believe in it? Con man or deluded crank?


My Call of Cthulhu group did some adventures based on Crowley's forays into the occult and of course we discovered he was a tool being used by THINGS MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW. My character as usual got killed but plenty of dynamite and Tommy guns took care of the rest.

My student group did a super awesome pub trivia night yesterday! We usually do an N64 tournament at the end of the year, but the student union has been so crap that we thought it would be easier to do our final event off campus. I genuinely thought that it would be the few of us who show up to meetings and a couple of profs, but we ended up selling about 45 tickets. And it was so much fun! My team lost to the profs' team by half a point.

—

My one-on-one directed reading course is so great. It's a lot of work because I have to be prepared to talk for a couple of hours about every book we read rather than being able to rely on my classmates to fill the time, but I'm getting a lot out of it too.

Sounds like you finally got things to work out Hippie!

bravo1102 wrote:
There are some who say that Mr. Crowley was all a fraud very good at selling an image and idea.

I can't say from a direct source, but from the 3rd hand accounts I've read it sounds like he was utterly genuine- More like a cross between Byron and Andie Warholl: a very arty sort of guy who was very invested in his self indulgence.
Though he didn't use his beliefs as a justifications for that, rather it was more of an explanation, a reason.

It was a time when people thought that their ideas were cleverer than they were, more universal than they were… Witness Sigmund Freud with his silly dream imagery.

In the end Alistair is the perfect prototype for the modern conceptual artist- With all the stupid silly niavite, the clever leaps in creative insight, the mashing up and synthesis of styles, the deluded self belief… He was all of that, doing his live shows, rituals, performances etc before modern art was a thing.

In the end Alistair is the perfect prototype for the modern conceptual artist- With all the stupid silly naivete, the clever leaps in creative insight, the mashing up and synthesis of styles, the deluded self belief… He was all of that, doing his live shows, rituals, performances etc before modern art was a thing.

Madame Blavatsky and Harry Houdini were contemporaries. Nothing really modern or unusual when you consider the performance art in theosophy, spiritualism and stage magic. Reading all the accounts of seances what Crowley did was nothing extraordinary and in fact was quite typical of the more gifted spiritualists and probably all just as fake. Very creative and probably self-delusional but still fake just needing an experienced skeptic like a stage magician to show up the showmen for the artists they were and nothing supernatural at all.

That wasn't really Crowley's deal at all, he was a very different character. He was all about self beleif and cult of personality, not a cynical ordinary man out to fool people.
The way be wrote, the things he beleived and the way he did it- was like a mixture of a rock star, Lord Byron, Tony Robbins, and a cult leader.
The only way Crowley would knowingly con people would be to fund further occult experiments.
I think he mainly earned his money as a writer anyway.
In a lot of ways he was a pretty admirable guy, a self made man who followed his goals and banged anything with a pulse, with enough self belief to float a Zeppelin…

But his other beleifs diverged from reality by a wide margin and he was way too self indulgent.

He was born into his money being the scion of a wealthy family. In fact some of his detractors consideted him an example of British upper class decadence . Intelligent, capable, charismatic and cruel he was more than able to make up and con people about all kinds of things. But like James Randi or Martin Gardner I treat this with a healthy dose of skepticism and cynicism. And a smile and a wink that people actually fall for this rot.

I've always meant to research him a bit, I've heard the basics but never got round to digging for a more accurate view.

Seems I have heart disease, bit of a bugger that. Hopefully not too bad but awaiting scans to see how bad it is. I've always had low blood pressure and cholesterol but somewhere in the last year that's gone belly up. Beta blockers ahoy.

Scepticism and cynicism aren't quite the same things Bravo. Close but there is a diff!
Bravo- I read an article in stupid Gizmodo where they think it's ridiculous that one of the bug fixes on the new F-35 fighters is for the pilot to reboot the radar occasionally. Maybe you could offer some perspective on that: I have red about more than a few weapons systems that have been active in war, very successful and have needed things like that regularly and have worked fine. Phantom Penguin when he was driving the newer Abrams in Iraq told us about how they had a hammer hanging in the turret to whack the targeting computer to get it working when it messed up (everyone had one). I've read about anti-aircraft systems on ships where the recommended fix would be to pull out all the computer boards to reboot the machine, even in combat…
So it Doesn't seem an unusual problem or a drastic fix on the F-35s at all in that respect.

——–

@Genejoke- I've been on beta-blockers coming up on two years now to reduce the incidence of my migraines. They work pretty well.

Cats are weird sometimes. One of the tenants complained to me about a cat that keeps sitting outside her windowsill, growling and making aggressive noises… at her cat who sits there. Now the thing is made of glass so the cat outside can't get in, but it keeps trying to get in. It has tried unsuccessfully to open the window and it also tried to wait at the front door to try and get in (good thing there's a screen door in front). Apparently this cat wants to get in to fight her cat (which just sat there being mellow… either it's neutered, feels safe knowing the hostile cat can't get in, or both.

Well… hopefully when I come in to work tonight Animal Control will have collected that hostile cat… And maybe my nights will be a bit more peaceful…

ozoneocean wrote:
Scepticism and cynicism aren't quite the same things Bravo. Close but there is a diff!

I find that they feed on one another and that cynicism helps me deal with being a skeptic. But I am a curmudgeonly cynic with an eye for irony and always ready to laugh at our foolishness and have come to love every minute of the absurdity.



Now if only I could get working on a comic again.


As for hammers and tank ballistic computers, they can get dusty from running around across country. It helps to knock it loose and to relieve frustration because the damn thing don't work right. Sometimes in combat you'd see a helmet draped over the wind sensor mast. It was often less than useless.

Being an optimist usually serves you better in many things though.
Cynicism is best for expectations of outcomes, especially financial dealing or things that involve a lot of hope/risk/luck - you lower your expectations and expect the worst so if it happens you're not under-prepared.
Optimism is what you use in interpersonal relations, communication, expectations in social situations - this makes you a nicer, more pleasant person to deal with who people don't like to disappoint.

I've found that a lot of people reverse those and fare horribly.

We're doomed before we even start, but let's do our best with alacrity and a sense of purpose and have fun doing it. Everything will work out for the best, we may not be entirely satisfied with the results but we'll make it work. Be cynical in anticipation and optimistic in execution.

Philosophy for life right there.

Do you ever feel you're spread a bit too thin? From what I know of you guys here, most of you are like that in some way.
It's tricky… I'm a very straight forward, single direction sort of person, so to be pulled in many different directions is mentally disorienting to me- in a real way. Worst of all I have a hard time finding moments to do my comics in between the emails I have to write and respond to among other things.

I often feel spread too thin, but I tend to focus on one thing at a time. It often appears I've been massively productive when several weeks/months worth of work come to a close in short succession, but often it's been slow going with me moving from project to project and putting the finishing touches to two within a week of each other.

Right now I'm out of work and dealing with health issues and helping my mum and step dad move abroad. The thing is they've lived in the house nearly thirty years together and my stepdad was there over ten years before that. It has a lot of memories and even more junk. So much to do, hence I'm not updating comics very well at the moment. The issue I have after that is once I get my health back on track I'll need to get back to earning money.
I really don't know what to do in that regard. I have experience in various things but none I particularly want to do. My best option would be office work, there's plenty of it going and I can earn some fairly decent money. The problem is many of my health problems are not helped by being sat on my arse all day and working in stressful environments.

I'd love to be able to work for myself bit not sure how. Or rather I don't know what best to do that would be a worthwhile enterprise.

Genejoke wrote:
I often feel spread too thin, but I tend to focus on one thing at a time. It often appears I've been massively productive when several weeks/months worth of work come to a close in short succession, but often it's been slow going with me moving from project to project and putting the finishing touches to two within a week of each other.

Right now I'm out of work and dealing with health issues and helping my mum and step dad move abroad. The thing is they've lived in the house nearly thirty years together and my stepdad was there over ten years before that. It has a lot of memories and even more junk. So much to do, hence I'm not updating comics very well at the moment. The issue I have after that is once I get my health back on track I'll need to get back to earning money.
I really don't know what to do in that regard. I have experience in various things but none I particularly want to do. My best option would be office work, there's plenty of it going and I can earn some fairly decent money. The problem is many of my health problems are not helped by being sat on my arse all day and working in stressful environments.

I'd love to be able to work for myself bit not sure how. Or rather I don't know what best to do that would be a worthwhile enterprise.

Hello there everyone. I am sorry about your health. You are doing a noble deed helping out your family. :)

Hey everyone I am new here to this site.

GJ, you're a good man. Sorry about the health challenges.

MegaRdaniels, welcome!

Genejoke, take care of yourself. You're fighting the good fight.

Anyone used a surface pro for making comics? I'm tempted to pick one up. I have a galaxy note but found it lacking for doing much art on but the surface pro runs full windows applications. That and with a high end one I should be able to use 3d software to some degree. It means paying out a lot but I'm tempted.

I definitely feel like I have a lot on my plate at times, but it is much better than the opposite of not having anything on my plate. There is no reason to complain. Right now, I am the busiest I have ever been in years, yet it does not feel that way because I enjoy all the jobs I get to do and I have learned how to manage the stress by being more equipt to handle the pressure over the years.

When I am feeling like I am stretched too thin, I find a counter balance to even out the inconsistencies and that is why I do yoga. It has become a solid part of my daily routine and life and my body thanks me for it every day.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
I definitely feel like I have a lot on my plate at times, but it is much better than the opposite of not having anything on my plate.

I generally feel that way too, although I know that for me I can't always predict the point at which I get too stressed and serious anxiety sets in. I am so busy right now. No excessive anxiety yet, which is good, but I do really want a day off. It seems that every day is spoken for right now, plus I have to fit in research, readings, writing, etc.

The final exhibition for my curatorial practicum is going up in a week, and then two days after that we're hosting a panel discussion about it. I feel like there is still so much that needs to be done. Tomorrow I'm going to interview an artist who's going to be on our panel, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking. And then I need to get out two didactic panels before the end of the week so that they can be translated before the installation.

Edit: Just had a thought that I could do a series of newsposts on my exhibition/practicum. I'm not sure how many people here are interested in gallery-related stuff, but it would be something to write about, anyways.

I was also supposed to present a draft of my final Russian history paper next Monday, but since there are only three of us in that class I convinced everyone to move it to Tuesday.

—

I'm preparing a conference presentation for May on punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union, and I mentioned to one of my former profs that I was thinking about contacting a former Soviet dissident who's still an active journalist. He offered to translate the message into Russian for me, because he's the best human being. Now I just have to figure out what I actually want to ask him! I have no idea if this guy will respond, but it would be so, so cool if he did.

Pressure is fine, what gets me is being pulled in too many directions or having to do things that are too far out of your realm of expertise. You can only do so much of that.

@Genejoke- I'm surprised you couldn't do much art with the Galaxy Note tablet! I find it brilliant for that and use it for 100% of my sketches and all the art I draw for the Quackcasts, like those ducks I've been doing. -Using Sketchbook pro.

@Bravo- Have you seen the vids by this guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPFHr18pt3Q
He's an Irishman that drove Chieftain tanks for the British Army and Abrams for the for the US Army.

I love his talks on Tanks because he focusses on the simple mechanical reality of the vehicles, not all that fake “bad ass” shit that most people blather on about. He just talks about nuts and bolts, where the horn is, how to tension tracks, where to fill up the fuel etc.

He even mentions model building. That bit about M13s with big kangaroos making good models. He talks tanks like a tanker. The guy who has to take the big steel thing and not only try to kill someone with it, but actually drive it around and make it work day to day.

Exactly! He has a lot of vids coving lessor known tanks in the same way and some lecture talks he gives. It's very instructive.
And no matter the vehicle he's talking about he's not full of pejorative crap and bias like for example Lee Emery or a car reviewer like Jeremy Clarkson- rather than rely on "common knowledge (urban myth) like those idiots he cuts through that stuff to find out directly for himself.

Actually he does in bit about some of the tanks he mentions in passing like the Australian use of captured M13 Italian mediums or the Australians balking at buying US M2 mediums in 1940. Though he might be speaking from personal experience of both tanks. There are running M13s in Italy and a well preserved M2 in the Patton museum.


Then there's his mentioning lots of types in passing and if you are not familiar you'll miss the reference. (British A13 Cruiser or Russian A20 fast tank. The A20 became the T34 that in fact entered production in late 1940 with several thousand in service in June 1941. Due to poor deployment and transmission problems they didn't cause the invading Germans too many problems. I built a model of one of the model 1940 tanks and have two others of different production variants of the model 1941 .)


It is interesting now with all the new information coming out, and plenty of myth busting revisionist research. Like the actual make and factory with documented variations of a tanks production run finally all documented after 75 years as opposed to the popular mythology spread in wartime accounts often based on incomplete captured intelligence. And it goes on and on making it kind of exciting to build the models.


I just built a 1939 panzer in the dual tone brown and grey scheme recently rediscovered with new research. I also did a Tunisian Tiger in the proper afrika braun which turns out to have been nearly as dark as US olive drab as shown in rediscovered Life Magazine color pictures. Pretty exciting all this time they were thought to be green based on erroneous accounts of Germans using captured RAF paint.

He's covered all those minor light and medium US tanks in previous vids pretty extensively. I don't know if he ever covers the big popular tanks actually, apart from a few exceptions like the Maus and the T-34.
I loved the lecture talk he did a while ago where he went into a lot of WW2 tank myths. It turns out that US tanks almost never faced Tigers and the “5 Shermans to one Tiger” is an old myth too.

From memory there were only 3 encounters, one where Shermans faced a Tiger (or tigers, can't remember), and won. The next was with Chaffee tanks and in that case the tigers won. The last was when the tigers were loaded on a train and just captured.
All other instances were just Panzer IVs confused for tigers because of the blocky shape, as you'd expect.

I just saw a vid on the Panther the other day- the colour scheme was based on the lack of paint apparently. The brown lines were the oxide undercoat :D

According to the combat logs of the German heavy tank battalions there were a few more times Tigers faced off against US Shermans. Especially Kasserine Pass, Sicily and Italy. British had the great majority of Tiger encounters in NW Europe. Then you read the US after action reports and unit histories and they also say something like that though called a Tiger it was really a Panther/Panzer IV/ even Stug or Hetzer!


It wasn't really a lack of paint. Late in the war the Germans realized the red brown primer was a good camouflage color in its own right. It was pretty close in color to the red brown they had been using since 1943. So for the period there was factory applied camouflage schemes red brown figured prominently. Again I have a few late war pieces I'm looking at schemes for.

Re- the paint.
Apparently the rationale was that they would make the paint go further by leaving the undercoat brown lines much wider than normal later in the war.
That's sort of what this fellow said anyway, using a 3rd of the paint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rUocSj2dHc

And this is Nick Moran talking about “American Armour Myths” that you may or may not agree with. It's a very long vid at 46 minutes, but worth it, if you're doing something else like drawing at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNjp_4jY8pY

The “third scheme” I met the guy who first verified it as a factory applied scheme. Though there is some controversy whether the outline color is white and whether the dark yellow had gotten more green in tone or if it was a green over spray and just how dark that was. There's also evidence that the road wheels from some factories were green. This is the kind of stuff the “drooling panzer freaks” discuss forever on their formums. Though I will be using variations of this scheme on my late Panzer IV and maybe a few others.

Hahaha, the Ozone and Bravo tank show! The Panzer IV is may fave WW2 tank- with the long gun that is and without the ugly extra plates hanging of the sides.
It's so nicely compact, so well proportioned. It's exactly what a tank SHOULD be. All nice shapes and so functional looking, with the typical Teutonic angles and hard edges that characterise much of their tech from fighter planes to battleships.

————–

Non-tankish now.
I love sleep. I love, love, love it oh so much… I just wish I could do more of it. But these days I have the buzzing busy bees of busyness bothering my bonce constantly. If I lie in I feel only that I'm letting stuff slide somewhere and I really should be getting up and working on something.
And even when I make time for relaxation I have a virtual clock ticking down in my head with diary pages open reminding me that I only have a small allotted time and then I have to start working again.

I miss that time when I could mentally shut off, when I could so easily pretend that obligations didn't exist and I existed outside of the working world.