Planetside Screenshots

I have decided to get my hair cut today.....which, brings me to a point. Apparently my personal weblog has now been reclassified as some sort of an 'official' Masonic blog or something, as it is now hyperlinked by several other sites. In the past week I have become a part of the Masonic online community. I didn't really know there was one, per se, but now I am in it. I kind of like to run off at the mouth and it seems I am not the only one. In general Masons are pretty tight-lipped. In fact a lot of our teachings tell us we are supposed to be. Even though I have never disclosed any of our secret rituals, handshakes, or passwords, I do blather on about the institution an awful lot.

This makes sense when you think about it because this is a personal blog, and it just so happens that my personal life intersects with Freemasonry quite a bit these days; it seems only natural that I would talk about something which is so important to me. About 15 years ago I was really 'into' UFOs. I read a hundred books on the topic and posted hundreds of messages on online services (there wasn't much of an Internet back then so most of my online activity was on Compuserve). Some of you may recall that wacky Alien Autopsy that was shown on television way back then. I was actually involved in the discovery of that film to some extent. I spoke to the man who was promoting it, Ray Santilli, and he even faxed me 'evidence' from the UK. If I had a blog back then it would have been filled with my thoughts about UFOs. Today I don't think about UFOs any more. They don't bother me particularly and I don't bother them. In fact, I'm pretty sure that unless you are personally being abducted by aliens (and if you are, you have my deepest sympathies) I wouldn’t worry about them too much. I ultimately migrated towards the views shared by Jacques Vallee on this topic. Even when I checked with my friendly neighborhood ghost named 'Seth' he confirmed Vallee's views, stating that most UFOs are a kind of 'bleed-over' from other 'planes' of existence that don't even share our same physical laws; so that when we see them 'here' they are in a kind of camouflage reality and our senses cannot perceive them in their natural state. This also accounts for why they do seemingly impossible things since their movement is occurring in higher dimensions; an interesting idea indeed. One item of note I found in the Vallee material was the fact that what we traditionally deem UFO and/or occult phenomena appears to be at the root of many great religious movements. This is particularly the case with regard to Mormonism and the miraculous occurrences at Fatima in 1917. When I read a book by a man named “William Bramley” called ‘The Gods of Eden” was when I really started to think twice about what ‘forces’ have been at work shaping various world religions that human beings seem to become addicted to.

There was a seminal event that caused me to start reading such strange and bizarre material and that was when I picked up a book titled “The New Inquisition” by Robert Anton Wilson. Soon afterwards I read his psyche shattering work “Cosmic Trigger” and I was never quite the same again. I started out as a fundamentalist (material reductionist and atheist) and ended up a strong believer in the one living and true God and a Freemason. How did that happen? Well, it was a long journey and since I didn’t have a blog at the time there is no public record of that transformation. Some of the material I posted on Compuserve over the years might still exist in archives somewhere but I have never seen it online.

This experience of reading “Cosmic Trigger’ and having it set an individual on a lifelong journey of discovery is a special one; shared by some number of the members of the human family. If you are unfamiliar with the work I will try to explain. The book is designed to produce brain change through the practice of guerilla ontology. For the record, I am enormously proud of the fact that the Wikipedia entry for ‘guerilla ontology’ was created from my own personal Wiki blurb. Guerilla ontology is the practice of exposing fundamentalists to radically new ways of thinking; presenting provocative thoughts, ideas, and rhetoric, ultimately designed to challenge their fixed worldview and produce brain change. The main take-away lesson I got from reading the Trigger was to realize that whenever I ecounter an idea and I get ‘angry’ then this response is saying something very important about *myself* not the author. If reading certain material can cause me to become angry then, what is happening, is that I am experiencing a primate response of territorial defense. Primates are very protective of their territory and human primates extend the concept of ‘territory’ quite easily to their beliefs. When the human brain wires itself into particular belief systems it creates a pattern that we identify as belonging to ourselves in the same way we think we 'own' our car, house, or other material possesions. When we are confronted by ideas, words, and concepts that contradict the way we have wired our brains it is a typical response to react defensively and with anger.

The point here is that we each individually wire our own brains in a specific neurological and biochemical way that causes specific physical transformations. We also have the power to rewire them. And, most importantly, we have to realize that when something as simple as words can cause such a powerful emotional response then, perhaps, we have wired portions of our brain just a bit too tightly. Like RAW I now operate under various ‘models’ and I am able to hold simultaneous and contradictory models in my minds eye, applying each to various situations as may seem best fit at the time. In RAW’s book “Quantum Psychology” he best expresses how a modern homo-sapiens can revise their interaction with the rest of the human race using relativistic language and a model-agnostic approach to reality interpretation. At it’s most basic level it works like this. Say, for instance, you see a UFO. Then this event becomes part of your personal experience and, to you, they are ‘real’. Your personal reality labyrinth now reflects and incorporates the experience you have just consumed; meanwhile, to the next guy who has had no such experience, his personal model for reality is unchanged. It is quite reasonable in this example for you each to hold disparate points of view on this topic without either of you being in personal conflict over the dichotomy. In short, the fact that someone else, who experiences reality differently than you do, holds different beliefs should be completely natural and understood. Just because someone else believes something in contradition to your own personal beliefs is not a threat and, often times, can't even be classified as 'right' or 'wrong'. Or, at least, I think that’s what it means.

So….the funny thing is that now that I am part of a Masonic blogging community, I find it remarkable how many of my Internet Masonic friends also credit Robert Anton Wilson as having set them on their journey. I think this is a really interesting phenomenon and provides hope that Freemasonry can survive into this next century as more enlightened souls realize it is a valid path towards self discovery. Or…maybe not..time will tell, but I remain hopeful.

So, anyway, I’m getting my hair cut today.

This evening my son Alex is being installed as an officer in his DeMolay chapter. I will be installed as the Chapter ‘Dad’. I need to dress up, look nice, and a hair cut never hurt anybody. Last I checked I’m something like 44 years old and not only am I not balding, I don’t have any gray and my hair grows like a horrible weed that will not die. My hair is so thick and unruly that the only way I have found it possible to cope with this dire situation is to just pretty much shave it off, so I doesn’t bother me for another couple of months. The only question I will have today is, will it be a number one or a number two cut?

Last night Alex had his regular meeting at Troy DeMolay. What an incredible event!!! Our Chapter was a bit disorganized just a few months ago and last night it had a regular meeting that was more vibrant than anything I have seen in my own Blue Lodge! After an excellent opening ritual there was a presentation of gifts and awards, then a reading from the David McCullough book ‘1776’ about the American Revolutionary general Nathaniel Greene. After this one of the young men did the ceremony of lights which was completely unexpected and was simply amazing! When this was over we had two young men scheduled to turn in their obligations. When the first young man gave his obligation I literally cried it was so touching. After these two gave their obligations one of the young men *spontaneously* decided to turn his in!!! This shocked everyone and that was only the beginning. As soon as he finished another young man, one of the older boys who had been a member for well over a year, offered to give his too!!! FOUR OBLIGATIONS TURNED IN, IN ONE NIGHT!!! What an incredible experience to be a part of. I was so proud of these young men. The five or six Master Mason visitors from the sponsoring lodge were blown away.

This evening at the Installation of Officers we expect to have a very impressive ceremony. Then, continuing this whirl-wind of DeMolay activity, on Saturday the chapter will be offering a Spaghetti dinner fund-raiser from 11am to 5pm followed by a movie showing afterwards. I will be setting up my 16mm equipment and showing the classic 1933 print of King Kong. It is very funny to watch the old King Kong if you just recently saw the new one. This is because Peter Jackson copied substantial portions of the original, shot for shot, down to the exact same choreography of certain battle sequences. It is very amusing if you have both of them in your mind at once. If you can come by the Troy Lodge tomorrow for the fundraiser and movie, please do so!

Once this spate of DeMolay activity is over I am going to pack up my truck and drive all of the way down to Florida. I will be stopping to visit some friends about some work related stuff on the way. While I am in Florida I plan to attend a Blue Lodge meeting. This will be the first time I have visited a lodge in another State. Previously the only lodges I have been to outside of Missouri were in Paris. On Friday I will pick up my son and make the long haul back home. Since I won’t be flying that means I won’t be reading a pile of books. However, I do intend to memorize some more ritual. It seems that driving alone in a car is the best way to learn ritual. You can speak it aloud and if you hold the ritual book on the steering wheel you can take quick glances at it to make sure you are getting it right. These past three weeks I memorized the entire ‘Entered Apprentice Charge’, which is the longest piece of ritual I have learned to date. Next I plan to do “The Letter G’, followed by the next two charges. Once these pieces are committed to memory they represent something significant I can contribute when there is degree work in addition to acting in my role as a steward.

So, anyway, I’m getting my hair cut today.

This is to remind you, the reader, that this is not a Freemason blog. I just talk about Freemasonry a lot because it is my latest fad or hobby. I strongly suspect I am not going to grow out of it. I think the investment made by memorizing ritual and the friendships forged will guarantee that this is to be a lifelong fascination and not just my latest obsession. I’m sure it will cool over the coming years but just as I don’t talk about 16mm on this forum constantly anymore that doesn’t mean I do not still care about my movie collection.

Be forewarned. Not all posts on this blog will be about Freemasorny. It will include all kinds of other boring trivia (besides this insanely long post). So, if you came here because you hyperlinked some Masonic weblog, don’t be surprised to see a great deal of non-Masonic material here.

This leads me to two final items for today. First, where are these Masonic sites that are part of this ‘circle of friends’ who also let RAW kick them in the butt and send them into the lodge? Second, how is it that people are getting here in the first place? Over the past week I have been collecting the search phrases people type to arrive at this site. Of course, as soon as I post them on this blog I will create a feedback loop of reinforcement so it will draw more people into this web of deception created by my wide ranging incoherent rambling.

A couple of the searches are quite amusing in terms of how they hook up with posts I have made in the past. I am sure that when the person who did their search ended up here, they most certainly did not find what he expected. One search term that has been quite common in the past couple of days is “Mohammad Cartoons”. I think it is obvious what the person was looking for but the reason that search shows up here is for quite a different reason. Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will remember my frequent stories about buying a large collection of 16mm cartoons from a “Naushad Mohammad” in South Africa a couple of years ago. I never got my films so I just milked the experience for all it was worth by talking about it online.

The other search I found quite amusing was “Lake Ratcliff Burn Ban”. Apparently there is a ‘Lake Ratcliff’ somewhere and there has been a ban on burning there. Of course, those keywords matched here because I live in Lake Saint Louis, my name is Ratcliff, and I recently cross-posted an old signature that began with the phrase ‘I would burn in hell before….’ I found this quite amusing indeed.

Here is a list of the searches I found:

Keyword Searches

"What Does a Scarab Look Like" --- Search MSN
"Jeff Roberts" " Rad Game Tools" --- Google
"Focoult" --- Google
"Lord of the Rings Toronto" --- Google
"Rainbow Girls" --- blogger search
"Seth Jane Roberts" --- blogger search
"Plaxo" --- Google
"Booth Babe" --- blogger search
"Melissa Meyer" --- google blog search
"Freemason Ritual" --- yahoo search
"mohomad cartoons" --- altavista
"Mark Pracht" --- google
"low carb made easy john ratcliff" --- google
"the diVinci code summary" --- MSN search
"the da vinci code FAQ or will the real priory of sion please stand up?" --- Yahoo search
"seth by jane roberts" --- google blog
"lost 213" --- blog search
"Freemasonry" --- blog search
“Lake Ratcliff Burn Ban” --- Google
“conworks” --- Google blog search
"masonic lodge" outfit costume photo --- Google
“ellen Chenoweth” --- Blog search
"our trip to seattle" --- blog search
"tobey maguire" --- blog search
"Simon Ratcliff girlfriend" --- Google search austrailia
"Collada DOM integration samples" --- google
"john ratcliff present day" --- google
"Mellisa Meyer" --- google blog
"mohamad cartoons" --- google
"freemasons" --- google
"cricket insect maket japan" --- google
"shooting pool" --- altavista
"bugs bunny homeless hare photograph" --- MSN
"mohomad cartoons" --- MSN
"freemason" --- blogger search
"4 player chess" --- google blog search
"cricket insect maket japan" --- google

Image Searches:

"blog girlfriend" --- altavista
"Bosom" --- Altavista
"desperate housewife" --- Altavista

Finally, here are the other Masonic weblogs that are part of this little internet community.

"Masonic Traveler"
"The Burning Taper"
"Dispatches from Maine"
"Pop Occulture"
"Excommunicate.net"
"Groucho-Ghandi"

Not necessarily all 'strictly' Freemason, but all interesting nontheless.
My last item of note is this. As previously mentioned my internet service provider took away my website. Now, there are dead links everywhere because this site was taken down. A lot of traffic comes to this site based on image searches and they are all pointing at my old ‘infiniplex’ website that is now gone. Now that they took away my website the only thing they are providing is wireless service and an email address. They are also charging me $50 a month for broadband service. Now, when I signed up with these guys over three years ago $50 a month was the going rate for broadband. However, today it is down to about $25 if I just add it to my telephone bill from CenturyTel. So, I called up my ISP yesterday and asked them, why is their service worth $25 more a month ($300 a year). They could not give me an answer. The guy in the billing department just said, yeah, we are losing a lot of people lately. So, the only reason at this point to keep my existing ISP is to retain my email address. Now, I don’t know how radical a thing it is to switch my email. The biggest problem is that every single website I have ever registered with points to my old email address. So, if I kill it, then go back to an old website I may be SOL because I won’t have any way to ‘get my old password’ sent back to me. Of course, notifying everyone about the change, etc. is a hassle. On the other hand, killing an old email address has some benefits. It forces spammers to pick up the trail on a new address.

My ISP is not helping themselves out one bit this morning. Today I do not have internet service in my home. I think I have pretty much decided to switch services, but first I would like to ‘try out’ the new one to make sure I am happy with it before I make the commitment. If anyone is already using CenturyTel broadband service send me an email to my current account and let me know what you think of it.

So, since I don’t have internet service I think I will go somewhere that does and, on my way, get my damned hair cut!