2017 books: 27-30

[the_siobhan]

    

Casebook on Alternative 3: UFO's, Secret Societies and World Control by Jim Keith I saw the TV show Alternative 3 when I was a kid and absolutely loved it. I spotted this book at Suspect Video years later and just assumed that it was an addendum to the TV show, with maybe the script. So I picked it up. Turns out it's actually written by a conspiracy theorist claiming that there actually is a real-life plot to move rich people to Mars and the moon. He has a whole series of these things. So. Yeah.

    

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig A book I read many years ago. Up re-reading I think it's held up pretty well. It's a semi-autobiographical book about a Motorcycle trip by the author with his oldest son. He had once been a brilliant philosopher but had experienced a nervous breakdown and been treated with electro-convulsive therapy at such high doses that it had pretty much wiped out his entire memory. Now he is on a motorcycle trip with his son and trying to remember some of the theories his old personality had come up with along with some of the other bits and pieces of his life. An odd book.

    

Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey Man, does this guy ever like the sound of his own voice. So apparently this book was the inspiration for Burning Man, so cool? Personally I found it extremely self-indulgent.

    

The Intelligence Agents by Timothy Leary This book has no plot. It's a series of essays and "dossiers" about Leary (referred to throughout as The Fugitive) and his friends. It claims they are something called Intelligence Agents, travelers from the future who are tasked to ensure that the next evolutionary step happens and drives us into our ideal future. I was never entirely clear how they were supposed to achieve this. I guess it was an experiment. I seems pretty dated now. And I couldn't help noticing how his Genetic Hall of Fame entries were all extremely monochromatic.

Comments

[greylock]

And this was the way I found out "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" was a real thing.

I've always thought it was a Monty Python joke.

[fidget]

There's this guy who used to come on Coast to Coast AM and used to claim that, as a child, he was recruited by DARPA to use a "space elevator" to go to Mars, where he met Barak Obama. In addition, he said that this DARPA program also participated in time travel, and he points to an old, blurry picture as proof that he saw Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address. Once, he informed Art Bell that he himself (Art Bell) had been working on the project, but that DARPA had erased his memory, so that's why he doesn't remember it.

I wish I could remember the guy's name. I know that he popped up on an episode of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, much to Jesse Ventura's annoyance. (Which was probably one of the best episodes of that stupid show, by the way.)

[nicklausse]

My color photography prof way back when required Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for his class. Giant (and genuine) hippie, obvs. I also thought it was weird.