Joseph Matheny's Blog, page 23

The Hat, The Egg & the Chaos

Ong’s Hat: Hidden History or Piney Mythology

“…to vanish without having to kill yourself may be the ultimate revolutionary act…” The Sacred Jihad of Our Lady of Chaos

“..That story again! Man, that’s old hat..” …some Buddtown local

I remember 1978. I was an eight year old boy, in Brooklyn, where Avenue H meets Kings Highway. After battling my older brothers for the last bowl of Cap’t Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, I’d settle in front of the tube for my all-time favorite morning show, (and still today – now owning all three seasons on DVD), Sid & Marty Kroft’s Land of the Lost. Kid TV shows of the 70′s were especially wrought with invasive weirdness; New Zoo Revue, The Magic Garden, The Patchwork Family…OH! and GIGGLESNORT HOTEL!! (what the F#@K was that about?) But Land of the Lost, for me, was the Led Zeppelin IV of children shows.

Hollow Earth, Time Travel, Sasquatches, Demonic Possession, A Lost Civilization of Reptilians that live underground, Alien Light Beings that can read our minds (the Zarn). Was it not, a total indoctrination to the Art Bell Show and all of our internet conspiracy lore? They even had their own “Mel’s Hole.“

One particularly unsettling episode was Split Personality. After some sort of earthquake, a doppelgänger of Holly shows up from a parallel universe. I remember thinking, “A Parallel Universe? What the hell is that?” What kind of crazy occult people were writing this stuff for children. In the wake of “The Summer of Love”, Hollywood was sure employing some dubious writers. The young Kathy Coleman Bell (Holly), with her ability to waterlog the TV screen with tears of terror (almost every other episode) sure had me convinced this was dead real. (Did I mention I was eight years old?) But as we all now know, from LOTL (and our beloved New Agers) nothing fights off paranormal woes like crystals. It’s safe to say that 70′s pop-culture played a big part of who I am today. Sometimes I wonder if it was the intention, of those shows, to influence an entire generation.

Little did I know, that, in the same year I was learning my all my occult knowledge from Saturday morning TV shows, there were actual portals to other dimensions being opened. And my family would move, only a half-hour’s drive away from where it happened. For those that have never been to South Jersey, there are, and always have been, us immigrant New Yorkers who have nothing to do with the so-called “Piney Power”. Before the rise (and FALL) of housing bubble, our suburbs were surrounded with acres of vacant woods, sand pits, and parkway trails. I mourn for the kids of today, to now, be robbed of such a wonderland. One could always go a little west on Rt. 72, to Lebanon State Forest.

If you have heard this story before, it’s only because your like me and seek this stuff out. Or, you live west of the shore and heard the whispers in the pines. We’ll I’ve lived here now since 1981 and have never meet anyone, in person, who’s heard it. I’m confident it will be news to some people. Maybe the author of Ong’s Hat: The Beginning, Joseph Matheny, might welcome it’s reiteration.

The Hat:

So. Sometime in the 19th century, your a popular, hat-wearing, young man about town (or in this case village) named Jacob Ong. It’s a typical night of trying your luck on the ladies at a local dance hall. You’ve had your heart set on one piney princess in particular, but you get shot down. Unable to conceal your frustration, you walk outside and start giving your hat a good thrashing. You throw it on the ground, stomp on it and fling it up in the air. And it never comes back down.

Legend does not state what color the hat was, but it sure must have stood out, hanging from a branch in the vast woods. All the area residents start to use Jacob Ong’s hat as a landmark. So much so, that Ong’s Hat was the adopted name for the town.  Perhaps, evidence of the Pineys’ partiality to the path to least resistance. Names like “Stop the Jade” Creek (a group of people chasing after a wild horse yelling “Stop the Jade.”) and Buddtown (named after some guy – Thomas Budd?)

The Egg

For those unfamiliar with the word ashram, it’s basically a retreat of sorts from cultural fatigue. A hiding place for a community that does not want to be found. It is heavily rumored that one such community existed, around 1978-early 80′s, in Lebanon State Forest; in the lost town of Ong’s Hat.

An enigmatic fella himself, Joseph Matheny, stumbled apon some mysterious literature. The first of which was entitled: INCUNABULA : A Catalog of Rare Books, Manuscripts & Curiosa Conspiracy Theory, Frontier Science & Alternative Worlds and later tracked down ONG’S HAT:GATEWAY TO THE DIMENSIONS! “A full color brochure for the Institute of Chaos Studies and the Moorish Science Ashram in Ong’s Hat, New Jersey. Matheny became intrigued with what he was reading, and rightly so. In his book, Ong’s Hat: The Beginning he let’s the contents of the pamphlet stand alone. It starts out with an apparent sales pitch to the potential consumer. “You have been searching for us without knowing it..” ending with an orotund, “Otherwise…you would not be reading this brochure…” Once you delve into the actual catalog, anyone paying close attention to text, can tell this is not a catalog at all. It’s reads like a mass pen-pal letter to a very discrete audience.

Within the “full color brochure”, it discloses a history of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America. A group of world-traveling white guys seeking esoteric knowledge (which was common in the 50′s and 60′s). One these Moorish players, was Wali Ford. Ford owned about 200 acres of land in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. He moved into an old rod & gun club on the property along with “several runaway boys from Paramus, New Jersey, and an anarchist lesbian couple from Brooklyn, and founded the Moorish Science Ashram“. (how do these people find each other?)

The MSA eventually gathered more recruits. Among them were “two young chaos scientists fired from Princeton (on a charge of “seditious nonsense”), a brother and sister, Frank and Althea Dobbs” (anyone familiar with Discordia, knows this is a big RED FLAG). With the addition of two more scientists (already residents of Ong’s Hat) and machine shop, set up by Chatsworth’s native, Martine Kallikak. The Institute of Chaos studies was born.

In an old airstream trailer they constructed a laboratory in a barn hidden deep in the Pines. In a patchwork of mind-altering drugs, meditation techniques, networked computers, quantum physics & (maybe) some sex yoga, they conjured up a great machine. This consisted of an sensory-deprivation chamber, called The Egg, in which attention can be focused on a computer terminal and screen. As the brochure states “..under these conditions progress proved amazingly swift..”

As the story goes, one of the Paramus runaways, named Kit, and the Egg itself, unexpectedly vanished from the laboratory during one of the experiments. After seven minutes of panic, the Egg reappeared with its passenger intact. And.. Yes, as you may have guessed, (just like Marshall, Will & Holly) Kit had traveled to a parallel universe. (No, I don’t have any grains of salt on me…)

In conclusion, the entire ashram discovered one universe, unpopulated by humans and set out to start a new Utopian society in another dimension. There are several conflicting stories about, whether or not, they actually migrated to the new world or the whole project was raided by a Shadow Government. And so, it remains a sort of mythology reality.

In the last pages of Ong’s Hat: The Beginning, Matheny conducted a phone interview with Emory Cranston, owner of INCUNABULA books. He goes into further detail about the progress of ICS and the Moorish Science Ashram. “..permanent doorways have been constructed..” he states “…which work even for non-initiates, sort of like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. They’re very nicely camouflaged…”

The Chaos:

Going back to the INCUNABULA catalog itself, it really does it’s best to convince the reader of the reality of this science, as well as, the actuality of a network of conspiracy to stop mankind from knowing it. Depending on the type of person you are, you can find yourself slowly entering another “reality tunnel.” Which is the intent of all cult pamphlets that circulate, but it’s also why Ong’s Hat: The Beginning is such a good read.

There are apparent synchronicities to my own past (…and present) that gave me ample pause throughout the reading of this material. There are constant references to an “anonymous traveler” on a spiritual quest, from Brooklyn (right around the time I lived there, as a child.) The entire plot, of my favorite kid show, Land of the Lost was a family that went to a parallel universe, unpopulated by humans. Lastly, I wind up residing about a 30 minutes away from Ong’s Hat. Then I reflect back to the introduction of this book “You have been searching for us without knowing it…Otherwise…you would not be reading this brochure…” Fucking nuts!!

I took a recent drive to Lebanon State forest, only to find it wasn’t there. It’s now named the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest. (who is this guy anyway) The visitors center was open. I took some maps & a postcard of Walt Whitman. While driving in Four Mile circles for about 15 min. I found Ong’s Hat Road. I kept looking for a Buddtown Rd. which, according to the trail map from the visitors center, leads to Ong’s Hat. No signs read “Buddtown Rd.” anywhere! It was too cold for this shit. An hour & a half later I head back to the shore. After some Googling when I got home, I realized I drove right through the town of Ong’s Hat, about 3 times. Fucking nuts!!

What started, on my part, to be a simple regurgitation of piney mythos had become, for me, a self-analytical reverie. Inside the perpetual waiting room of the human condition, what else can we do but ponder fantasies of Utopia. As I venture further into the parawilderness, there’s always a trepidation, that will slingshot me back to the safe bosom of the consensus. But still, it always brings on a bigger sadness. Somewhere deep in your being, you know it’s a much worse fate. I cannot see the faces but, man, can I hear the voices.

If your a local, and bored, I found a link from trails.com on how to get there.

Sort of last minute, I decided to attach a companion podcast of Joseph Matheny interviewing some of the survivors. In hopes of further titillating any curiosity to it’s validity. The following recordings were indeed from the incunabula.org website.  And I give full attribution Joseph Matheny & the incunabula.org staff.    enjoy

incunabula.org

incunabula @ deoxy.org

Press Play to Listen

Download & Keep this File!!

SOURCE

 

It all started with a road map of New Jersey. A little north of the Red Lion Circle, in the heart of the Burlington County Pine Barrens, the map depicted a tiny hamlet marked with the unusual name of “Ongs Hat.” In the early 1930s, Henry Charlton Beck, a reporter with the Camden Courier Post, became curious. After convincing his editor that a story could be found there, he and a photographer packed up a car and set off to investigate.[1] Little did he know that his explorations at Ongs Hat, and a succession of later voyages to mysterious places in the hinterlands of New Jersey, would inspire generations of other “lost town hunters” –pouring over ancient maps, exploring dismal cellar holes in the middle of nowhere, and sharing their discoveries with one another – first by telephone and letter and presently through online forums.

In Beck’s time, the best way to Ong’s Hat was the rough tarred road out of Pemberton. Little travelled, the long, slow road passed through miles of bleak forest, cranberry bogs, and forlorn cedars where scarce a human foot had trod. Only a dusty clearing betrayed the location of where the town once stood. Today, the road still follows the same route, but it is now well-maintained asphalt. Want to go? Just travel south from Pemberton, past the old Magnolia Road Tavern, until you come across a restaurant on your right hand side. You’ve arrived in Ong’s Hat – miles away from anywhere. Blink and you’ll miss it.

The story of Ong’s Hat begins long before the birth of our nation. On February 5, 1631 the ship Lyon arrived in Boston Harbor from Bristol, England. The settlers on board included Francis Ong, of Suffolk County, England; his wife Francis; and children Simon, Jacob, and Isaac.[2] Members of the Society of Friends, the Ongs left England seeking religious tolerance in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[3] Isaac and his wife, Mary, moved to Burlington County around 1688, eventually settling on a plantation in Mansfield Township. They had five children: Jacob, Jeremiah, Isaac Jr., Sarah, and Elizabeth. On June 13, 1696 Jacob Sr. died, leaving his plantation and other property to his second wife, Sarah.[4]

Jacob Ong was born on his father’s plantation around 1672, and followed in his footsteps as a farmer. An early court case in 1698 tells of Jacob being accused of riding his horse at a gallop “in the fair time Betwixt the Market house and the water side” in Burlington City – charges that were eventually dropped when nobody appeared in court to prosecute.[5] Sometime after 1699 he left Mansfield, following his sister Sarah and her new husband, Edward Andrews, to Egg Harbor.[6]

The forlorn cedar swamps along the Stop the Jade Creek called to Jacob, and in 1700 he purchased 100 acres of land in Northampton Township, encompassing the area that would later be known as Ong’s Hat.[7] There is no evidence that he ever intended to build a home there. It’s more likely he realized that he could make good money harvesting the cedars on his land.

So what about the hat? The oldest maps simply show the location as “Ongs.” Thomas Gordon’s Gazetteer of 1834 seems to be the first published source in which the town gains its puzzling surname.

The Magnolia Road Tavern, just north of Ong’s Hat.

Several theories abound explaining the unusual name. The most famous recounts Jacob Ong as a type of dandy, as best as the eighteenth century could produce, that regularly visited the local tavern. Jacob was quite the charmer and known for wearing a fine silk hat. One night he seems to have gotten on the wrong side of his dance partner who, in a fit of anger, snatched the hat from Jacob’s head and stomped on it in the middle of the dance floor. This story can be discounted, as a tavern was not located here until the early 1800s. Another story is that Ong’s Hat is a misspelling of Ong’s Hut, and that the Ong family built a hut or some other structure as a convenient stopping-over point between Egg Harbor and Burlington or Mansfield.

I find the most plausible theory to be one concerning the tavern at Ong’s Hat. Isaac Haines was one of the first recorded tavern keepers in the area, establishing his business circa 1800.[8] In the days where many people could not read, an identifying mark was more valuable than words. It doesn’t stretch the imagination to picture the tavern keeper painting a large hat on a crude pine board and hanging it from a pole to announce to passersby that they had reached the “Ong’s Hat Tavern.”

The town of Ong’s Hat soldiered on in relative anonymity until tragedy struck. About 1917, a pine hawker named John Zimbacke and his wife mysteriously disappeared from their small cabin. Nine years later, brothers Orville and Joseph Carpenter came across the skull of the woman while hunting for deer along the fringes of a cranberry bog north of Ong’s Hat. Arriving on the scene, Burlington County detectives, led by Ellis Parker, found the bones of John scattered by buzzards across nearly two miles. Suspicion fell to the couple’s son, who disappeared shortly before his parents went missing.[9] The trail led Parker to New York City where, unfortunately, it went cold. It has been said that Parker kept the skull of the woman in his office as a reminder of the case he was unable to solve.[10]

Eight years later, another crime brought Ong’s Hat back to the headlines. Farmer Ellwood Anderson was driving from Mount Holly to his home near Reed’s Bogs when he found the road blocked. It was shortly before 8 PM and the dim light of the moon illuminated the vehicle that had halted his progress. Anderson stopped his car and walked towards the vehicle, whose doors stood open. Inside, the bodies of two men slumped over to the side. Peering out into the dimly lit woods, he saw another body. Horrified, he ran back to his car and phoned the State Police barracks in Columbus.[11]

When the police arrived, they found that the men had all been shot at least twice at close range with a double-barrel shotgun. Once again, Ellis Parker made his way out to Ong’s Hat to investigate. Details on the victims came first – Edward Reihl, Stanley Zimmer, and William Schwar, all from Easton, Pennsylvania.[12] Prohibition had just started, and the three young men were known to be members of a gang that would follow molasses trucks to clandestine stills in Pennsylvania and Western Jersey. They would burst out after the truck had arrived and shake the owners of the still down for money with a threat to report their operations. The men frequently ran afoul of Pennsylvania mobsters, and it was reported that they had been “beaten up” several times prior. The detectives were tipped off that the trio had planned to raid a still in Trenton before the mobsters got to them. “They tried to burn somebody up once too often,” Detective Parker said to a Trenton Evening Times reporter, “and they got burned up themselves.” Parker surmised that the perpetrators rounded up the men and drove to a predetermined spot in the backwoods near Ong’s Hat. The men were removed from the car, lined up, executed, and haphazardly returned to the vehicle. Nearby residents reported hearing the retorts from the shotgun, but assumed that it was blasting being done nearby.[13]

Apanay’s Cafe at Ong’s Hat

When Henry Charlton Beck visited in the late 1920s, he found the hamlet to be little more than a clearing with bits of broken brick, pieces of roofing, cast-off shoes, and long, straggly Indian grass to mark where the town once stood. He found one last resident, Eli Freed, trying to make a living there. Freed, then seventy-nine years old, had moved there from Chicago. At Ong’s hat, Freed said, he had cleared twenty acres by hand and built a house with the help of a man called Amer. He was having a rough time of it – the deer and rabbits kept eating the produce he attempted to grow, despite the high fences constructed to keep them out.[14] By the time Beck came back to revisit, Freed had departed and Ongs Hat was deserted.

Ultimately, the strangest tale about Ong’s Hat has to be about the Incunabula Papers. In the papers, it’s claimed, Wali Fard, an American expatriate and follower of tantric and shamanistic magic, returned to America after the fall of Afghanistan to the Soviets. He laundered his savings by buying 200 acres of land near Ong’s Hat, including the former Ong’s Hat Rod and Gun Club. There, with several other people who had followed him from New York, he founded the Moorish Science Ashram.[16]

Ten years later, the ashram became a place of refuge for other Moors and outcasts. Among the new residents, by then living in a scattering of weather-gray shacks, Airstream trailers, recycled chicken coops, and mail-order yurts, were Frank and Althea Dobbs, siblings and scientists. Joseph Matheney, one of the authors of the Incunabula Papers, claims that the Dobbs were scientists who lost their positions at Princeton University when they attempted to submit a thesis based on “cognitive chaos” – a scientific and philosophical system that stated that patterns of thought could affect autonomic functions like tissue repair and aging, unlock the brains unused potential, or perhaps even control matter itself.[17]

At the ashram, the scientists resumed their aborted experiments. Through trial and error they found that by controlling thought patterns, especially with the use of sensory deprivation, that one might be able to cross over to another universe. They constructed a series of “vessels” they named “eggs” that would facilitate the journey. The legend continues that one night the compound was raided in a “black ops” operation and the buildings and experiments all destroyed. Elsewhere the papers say that groups of refugees left before the raid happened, settling in Ong’s Hat in a parallel universe – one just like our own but without human habitation.[18]

While the events that they claim happened at Ong’s Hat are certainly fictional – there was never any Ong’s Hat Rod and Gun Club, for example – the story itself once again thrusts the tiny backwoods hamlet back into the spotlight. Joseph Matheny and others created the Incunabula story as an experiment in “culture jamming” – creating a fictional, yet somewhat plausible, story and weaving it into the social consciousness. He was successful – years of photocopied pamphlets, text files uploaded to pirate and fringe internet bulletin board systems, websites, blogs, radio interviews, and books have cemented the infamy of Ong’s Hat.

Whether it’s a hat, a hut, or a tavern, Ong’s Hat is certainly one of the most infamous of the Pine Barrens ghost towns.

 

Notes:

[1] Beck, Henry Charlton. Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1994), 7.

[2] Ong, Albert R. The Ong Family of America. (Martins Ferry, OH: privately printed, 1919) PDF: (http://archive.org/download/ongfamily...), 15.

[3] ibid, 16.

[4] ibid, 19.

[5] Honeyman, Abraham Van Doren. The New Jersey Law Journal, Volume XV. (Plainfield, NJ: New Jersey Law Journal Publishing Company, 1892), (http://books.google.com/books?id=DntM...), 7.

[6] Blackman, Leah. “History of Little Egg Harbor Township, Burlington County, N.J.….” Published in Proceedings, Constitution, By-Laws, List of Members, &c., of the Surveyors’ Association of West New Jersey. With Historical and Biographical Sketches Relating to New Jersey. (Camden, NJ:  S. Chew, Printer), 331-332

[7] Bisbee, Henry H. Sign Posts, Place Names in History of Burlington County, New Jersey (Willingboro, NJ: Alexia Press, 1971), 176.

[8] Boyer, Charles S. Old Inns and Taverns in West Jersey. (Camden, NJ: Camden County Historical Society, 1962), 100.

[9] “Finding of Bones Reveals Murders.” Trenton Evening Times, Dec 23 1926, 3.

[10] Beck, 22.

[11] “Mob Execution Seen in Killing.” Trenton Evening Times, Sept 24 1934, 1.

[12] “Trace Mobsters in Trio Killing.” Trenton Evening Times, Sept 25, 1934, 8.

[13] “Suspect is Held in Triple Murder.” Trenton Evening Times, Sept 24, 1934, 14

[14] Beck, 23

[15] Beck, 6

[16] Matheny, Joseph and Peter Moon. Ong’s Hat: The Beginning. (New York: Sky Books, 2002) Kindle Edition

[17] ibid

[18] ibid

LINK

We were told to look at this map to see a strange egg shaped ridge which some locals swear is the remnants of the old Ong’s Hat Ashram. Sure enough, there it is. Spooky!

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=39.922524,-74.665103&spn=0.010038,0.022724&t=h&z=16&source=embed

Ref: http://incunabula.org/2012/09/ongs-hat-ashram-remnants/

A very interesting article/review of Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: Now, from the you-can-learn-something-new-every-day files, comes Michael Kinsella’s Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat.

Read it here: http://chronicle.com/blogs/pageview/the-surprising-online-life-of-legends/29221

From the article:

The response of Joseph Matheny to Legend-Tripping Online suggests the success of Kinsella’s read on the Incunabula Papers. On his Web site, Matheny wrote that Kinsella “did an excellent job and only missed the mark with two or three of his conclusions,” which Matheny said he would clear up by writing a complementary account.

In the context of the Incunabula Papers and Ong’s Hat, something about that statement echoes beguilingly. Is Matheny offering to perpetuate the project, despite closing it down?

Or perhaps he never did shutter it. In 2001, his announcement of the termination of the project said that he and a colleague “decided today to publicly announce in the near future that the Ong’s Hat Project has now concluded.” Not only do the tenses in his statement appear slippery, but he also tantalizingly mused that he did think the Incunabula Papers “would still make a good book from a cultural anthropology perspective.”

Is Kinsella’s Legend-Tripping Online not only that book, but also, unwittingly, another phase in the whole, crazy Incunabula Papers caper?

Kinsella allows: “When you’re dealing with this…this thing, there are trickster qualities and pranks and hoaxes, and fact and fiction are so blurred that it’s really hard to make sense out of it.”

    

Also see this review from the Journal of Folklore Research

Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat

My review: I was expecting to hate this book, but I didn’t. Michael Kinsella did an excellent job and only missed the mark with two or three of his conclusions. Of course, this is forgivable since he wasn’t in possession of all of the facts from behind the scenes. As a remedy to those few slight errors, and in interest of keeping the record straight I will issue a free companion guide to this book in a few weeks.  Since the book is primarily about myself, my friends, my project and my methods, I do admit to being  somewhat close to the subject.  However,what colors my decision to release the guide is simply that I’d like the record to be as clear as possible if this is to become a subject of “study” by academia.

Other than a few forgivable gaffs (and I do mean a very few), this book is quite enjoyable, insightful and entertaining.  I’m glad someone in academia was able to decipher many of the the objectives and methodologies of this project and I highly recommend it (with the soon to be released companion guide, of course).  If you choke at the price of $55 USD, you may want to wait for the paperback (if they publish one) or the inevitable ePub that’s sure to show up in the wild. (added 8-12-11: Looks like it showed up on Google Books.)

Description: On the Internet, seekers investigate anonymous manifestos that focus on the findings of brilliant scientists said to have discovered pathways into alternate realities. Gathering on web forums, researchers not only share their observations, but also report having anomalous experiences, which they believe come from their online involvement with these veiled documents. Seeming logic combines with wild twists of lost Moorish science and pseudo-string theory. Enthusiasts insist any obstacle to revelation is a sure sign of great and wide-reaching efforts by consensus powers wishing to suppress all the liberating truths in the Incunabula Papers (included here in complete form).

In Legend-Tripping Online, Michael Kinsella explores these and other extraordinary pursuits. This is the first book dedicated to legend-tripping, ritual quests in which people strive to explore and find manifest the very events described by supernatural legends. Through collective performances, legend-trippers harness the interpretive frameworks these stories provide and often claim incredible, out-of-this-world experiences that in turn perpetuate supernatural legends.

Legends and legend-tripping are assuming tremendous prominence in a world confronting new speeds of diversification, connection, and increasing cognitive load. As guardians of tradition as well as agents of change, legends and the ordeals they inspire contextualize ancient and emergent ideas, behaviors, and technologies that challenge familiar realities. This book analyzes supernatural legends and the ways in which the sharing spirit of the internet collectivizes, codifies, and makes folklore of fantastic speculation.

From the Inside Flap

How the Internet crystallizes fringe theories into amazing realities

Also see this recent article from The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Surprising Online Life of Legends

and this

           Supernatural folklore subject of former Sidney man’s book

Archive of the Video roundtable: Part 1, Part 2

Audio archive of Strange Universe (audio only)

Youtube

This week: Iran’s giant Intranet, Bradley Manning needs to go home, Anonymous creates a new Megaupload?, Goodbye Lulzsec – hai thar Malsec, FBI seizes another mailer, Who’s to blame for oil spills?, Hole drummer’s documentary, Surviving Progress, Debt, and three boobies!

Personnel –  Joe Nolan, Nicholas Pell,  Joseph Matheny, and Ken Eakins.

Listen or download here

This week: Nicholas Pell goes to charm school, Life on Mars, Pell on politics, the Tupac hologram, The beat goes on, SkyNet, and why you shouldn’t support the God Save The Queen re-release!

Download or listen here

Personnel –  Joe Nolan, Nicholas Pell,  Joseph Matheny, and Ken Eakins.

Linky Poos


Neil Young reinvents digital audio format  - Link
Mars Viking Robots ‘Found Life’  - Link
Boehner Endorses Romney  - Link
Tupac back from the dead as a hologram at Coachella – Link
Kerouac Estate Controversy – Link
What’s After Autonomous Cars? Humanoid Robots – Link
Don’t support the re-release of God Save The Queen – Link

Musical Interludes

Yppah - They Know What Ghost Know

Serge Gainsbourg - Requeim Pour Un Con

M.C. Lars - Hot Topic is not PunkRock

Justin Kirby  just loaded the series 1 and 2 connected marketing interviews he conducted with industry luminaries from 2005-7. He's hoping to start another series soon, but in the meantime you can check out the following:

Douglas Rushkoff (author and cultural critic)
Professor Tor W Andreassen (on Word of mouth applied research)
Andrea Learned (on marketing to women)
Tim Keiningham of IPSOS Loyalty (on Customer loyalty research)
Erik Hauser (on Experiential Marketing)
Dr Alain Samson (on Word-of-Mouth Research)
Joseph Matheny (on Alternate Reality Gaming)
Lois Kelly (on Conversational Marketing)
Professor Frank T. Piller (on Mass Customisation & Open Innovation)
Reinier Evers of Trendwatching.com (on Trendwatching)
John Cass (on Corporate Blogging)
Annette Simmons (on Corporate Storytelling)
Suw Charman and Kevin Anderson (on Corporate Blogging)
Alan Moore (on Engagement Marketing)
Greg Galle (on Corporate Storytelling)
Martin Oetting (on Connected Marketing)
Idil Cakim (on eInfluencers)
Graham Goodkind on Buzzworthy PR/Talkability
Schuyler Brown (on Trendspotting)
Dr Paul Marsden (on Connected Marketing)
Emanuel Rosen (on Buzz Marketing)

This week: Cameron goes boring…again, Facebook privacy boggles our minds, Hitler's LA bunker, Kim's new hero rises, New drug could seriously reduce cancer, Borat strikes again, Dangerous Iranian over-confidence, Your privacy online is a sci-fi fantasy, Middle-East state executions, and Technology that bleeds!

Personnel - Joseph Matheny,  Kim Monaghan, and Ken Eakins.

Download or listen