Ben Mack / Howard Campbell interview re:
Poker Without Cards c/o Intellishit.
Conducted by b.e. hydomako, 07.23.05.
I promised RINF.com, THE Underground Gateway, I would have something for them by 7 AM, July, 23rd regarding this whole mad affair. It's 6:50 AM and if email does what it's supposed to, I'll finish this introduction and get this filed in time.
Poker Without Cards presents itself as a transcription of six discussions between Howard Campbell and Dr. William Fink. After finishing the book I didn't know what was real, so I began tracking down the supposed participants. Beginning with his publisher, I was YELLED at in TYPE. He refused to be interviewed. Although I didn't understand at the time, he mocked my efforts. But he gave me Mack's email address, so it wasn't a total dead-end. Ben replied amicably and in a timely fashion--at first. RINF wanted me to look into the rising interest in this mysterious text; however, Ben Mack strung me along. After saying he would do an interview his behaviour became increasingly erratic. And then there was that 4:23 a.m. phone call. Several days after the interview fell apart, Howard Campbell contacted me to say he thought Ben Mack--his stalker--was clearly insane: this whole drama showed as much. I'm beginning to agree. He and I exchanged a few emails on the matter in the following days. He knew I was proceeding forward in my investigation, and that RINF wanted something soon. Thankfully Howard Campbell decided to step forward and agreed to be interviewed-saving my ass so I could meet my deadline. Forgive me if there are typos or inaccuracies, my eyes are bloodshot, I've been awake for 28 hours and my fingers hurt.
It is 6:53 AM and I am hitting send.
ME: In talking with Dr. Fink you mention what seems to me a sort of numerological system based on the numbers 1 to 6, and you talk about this system as a sort of technique of divination based on the rolling of a six sided die. Where did it come from?
HC: Incredible! One of the worst performances of my career and they never doubted it for a second.
ME: What?
HC: I'm sorry. I'm watching Ferris Beuller's Day Off as we do this thing. The six-sided die? I made it up in the moment. At Bennington College, I had been using the I-Ching, the die tool and the methodology evolved on the spot. Ever read the book, A Beautiful Mind? John Nash was asked how he could believe he was getting messages from aliens. Nash said it just made sense to him the same way math solutions made sense to him-just appeared in his mind. Same thing for me, the system of the die just occurred to me and made sense to me as I fleshed it out.
ME: No, I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movie.
HC: Fuck the movie! Read the book. I meet so many people that claim Wag The Dog as one of their favorite movies and yet virtually none of them have read Larry Beinhart's American Hero.
ME: Okay, I'll keep my eye out for these books-hell, maybe I'll even read them both!
[laughter]
About Nash's response-it makes sense to me-things arise in the mind and they can seem as real and as sensible as what consensus reality agrees is there, but it so happens that these same things are only real and sensible for the particular human being or perhaps a particular group of people.
Like RAW says, "what the thinker thinks, the prover proves." These things-Nash's solutions and his contact from aliens-both appear in his mind as a product of thoughts. So he, like anyone else, used what was available from the context of his situation to prove these same things. When it comes down to it, belief is always a personal choice between affirmation or denial.
HC: Exactly. About Robert Anton Wilson's quote, "the prover proves,"-most funded provers have a Judeo-Christian funding source. They are willing to prove that prayer works but there is little funding to prove that thoughts manifest themselves in reality, unless you look at attitudinal research. Wiccan rights-nobody is standing up for the spiritualists.
ME: Yes, the research gets funded by like minded individuals-the majority here being the Judeo-Christian memeplex. It makes sense why only certain types of investigations are carried out by 'scientifically reputable' sources while research on the fringes of the Judeo-Christian mindset and beyond lack this sort of backing. These same fringe groups are smeared in the media. It's not that "nobody is standing up for the spiritualists," but that those standing up don't have the same scaffolding to build their platform on. They lack the funding and promotion of well publicized experimenters-the ones towing the line with the majority memeplex.
But, yeah, back to the die: you mention the I-Ching, which uses six lines to create its hexagrams, did this or anything else influence the way you decided to apply those particular meanings to the numerals?
HC: I'll try and stay on your train of thought. I tend to ride the express train and often skip the destinations of my co-travelers. I'll slow myself down.
[sound of drinking]
The die divination just made sense to me. I wasn't consciously making choices, but, now that I think about it, I see that the ideas of numerical structures were seeded in my mind by Buckminster Fuller, as readable in Fuller's Earth, A Day With Bucky and The Kids. But, I'd also been reading a fair number of metaphysical texts. The first premise of one was that One was an illusion. This is the essence of the eight-ball demonstration I have blogged about and is in The Transcript.
I hope you don't transcribe this verbatim. I'll sound clunky to readers of an actual transcript.
ME: Don't worry man-I'll smooth it out and tweak it up-you'll sound golden! But I gotta' get it done posthaste!
HC: Urgency is the destroyer of options.
ME: I would agree. Let's talk about the illusion of one. I hadn't heard of that eight-ball thing before reading Ben's publication of your sessions with Dr. Fink, but I took to that right away. It seems so reasonable, though, that to mark a boundary demarcates the existence of Other: the circle of Oneness is actually two things. More to the point, like when we examine the eight-ball, we see that both are present in the singularity. This singularity itself can only exist as One because we, or something else, become its Other. The illusion of One you talked about, the starting point of your die divination.
[pause; sound: shuffling of paper]
At one point in the meeting, you relate to Dr. Fink what seems to be a previous obsession with this method-do you still roll a die towards this end?
HC: I haven't done that in a couple years. I don't know why not.
ME: I tend to think that sometimes after we become familiar with such a system, we often end up internalizing it. I have done this to some degree with Runes.
HC: I've never worked with Runes. But, yes, I've internalized the number system I work with. Good point. I often see structures of people or ideas in terms of the solidity of the system. Most communications are 5s. Most people are most blind to 5s. I'm not a fan of living in 5s, they give me hives, like in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.
ME: Ah yes, the 5s.I've heard your livelihood has been affected by Ben Mack's publication of the transcripts, that because of the way you reveal the tricks and mechanisms of media agencies from an insider's perspective you are now blacklisted from working in advertising. Is this true?
HC: Yeah, it's true to a large extent. Ferris Beuller's Day Off is such a good movie. Seriously underrated in terms of social content. Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus and I'd still have to bum rides off of people.
[laughter]
ME: Shit man, I know that feeling-at least.I think I do.
HC: [chuckles] John Hughes is a genius. He wrote the original Vacation movie, before they gave him directing gigs. But, I could never be The Walrus. All my life I've been Cameron. Dr. Hyatt helped me be the walrus. Black Book IV, I write about it.
ME: Cameron? The character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off? We were talking about how Ben Mack cost you your livelihood.
HC: [coughing] I still work some gigs, but for small and edgy clients. CCEO isn't paying me a grand a day to hang with them like Fattall and Collins or Deutsch did.
ME: Did I hear you right-a grand a day?
HC: Yeah, you heard me right. That's what I made 10 years ago.
ME: You got paid one-thousand dollars a day by media companies to come up with effective strategies for creating more revenue for corporate interests by using methods and techniques which exploit and manipulate the people they are targeted towards? That's fuckin' sick!
HC: Well when.
ME: Look. Taking a moment to think about the structure of our society and its positions therein, we find that many people are struggling to make a thousand bucks in a week or maybe even two. Now, it's this same majority of people which most media will be targeted at.
HC: Yeah that's.
ME: Let me finish. So these people-who aren't even making close to the kinds of money you were when you were employed to manipulate them-are the same people who provide corporations with most of their revenue; in other words, the same system which exploits and essentially enslaves the people locked into it is also the same system which these people buy into and support through their continued reliance upon it. It's another strange attractor within the majority memeplex.
HC: You aren't going to let me get much in here.
ME: No, but really, I owe you thanks here-it was reading the transcript of your words in Ben's publication which really made the whole "meme-speak with respect to media" gel in my head.
Now where was I?
HC: You were about to tell me your thoughts on the 'strange attractor' you see-something about my salary and.
ME: Oh yeah! The disease that occupies most people's minds, which is implanted in them without their knowledge, is that they believe that by themselves they can't change the system-media reinforces the idea that we are all individuals: individuals who get ahead by looking out for them selves, a sort of hyper-selfishness. This drives people to believe that by buying the right set of products, owning the correct brands, will somehow satisfy the loneliness and alienation generated by their acceptance of 'the way things are'. But really, all this does is support the very structures that keep them in bondage!
HC: "The rich get richer."
ME: And the poor get fucked six ways from Sunday! But the atrocity is.
HC: Atrocity?
ME: The atrocity, Howard-and I'm sure you'll agree, is that if we take the bottom portion of the poor in our Western society we find that most of these people still live as good as or better than many of the rest of the people on this planet!
HC: I had mentioned something awhile ago on TWISP. I was asking people to consider what a graph of the distribution of wealth in the world would look like compared to the 'standard distribution' of the Bell Curve--it's not a pretty picture.
ME: EXACTLY! I feel that the redistribution of wealth is the number one priority if we wish to move towards a sustainable future in a 'global village' and not a 'global gulag'. Wealth here isn't merely about the money backed up by gold and debt. No. It's the move towards an equal share of the resources of our planet being guaranteed to each individual. That'd be revolutionary. I mean, we could start with things like pushing Fuller's worldwide power grid. There's lots of people who've laid out elements that promote a benevolent world. We have to start collecting these pieces and turning the ideas into realities.
Damn man, thanks for letting me go on a bit of a tear like that. It feels almost cathartic.
HC: Yeah well, don't forget to clean up after yourself.
[laughter]
ME: OK, let me have a quick look at my notes.
[sound of shuffling paper; pause]
Oh yes! You were saying about how you've been affected by Ben publishing the transcript of those tapes. The big agencies won't hire you.
HC: Yeah that's right, but it's a matter of how badly people want to make money. Hungry shops, interested in effective ideas still hire me because they know I'll deliver: the black sheep knows the system the best.
But the easy gigs with agencies lacking a spine-they won't hire me. I spoke out against the organization and now the organization doesn't want me. It's like the Bulton nomination-Bulton said The United Nations doesn't exist, but Bush is suggesting he be our representative-Mack ousted me as having contempt for the organization, now the organization says I can find money elsewhere. I don't blame them. Would you hire somebody that says your company is corrupting minds?
ME: [soft laughter] No, probably not, but if I could lure this person into helping me corrupt minds, well...no, I'm only kidding. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there.
HC: I'm glad you laugh-it means you aren't taking this shit too seriously. Having Mortiis on The Pitch, Poker & The Public has gotten me banned from at least one site I've come to be a regular marketer on. It fascinates me how scared most people are. How can they live like that? But the thing is, what really gets me, is that deep in my heart I like advertising.
It may be an abusive relationship, but I'm attracted to good advertising. Advertising is like gunpowder: an effective tool that won't be un-invented. I am a strong advocate for decent brands. I just didn't like what was often deemed decent.
ME: We're on a similar wavelength here. Certainly I've seen ads that I've enjoyed and appreciated. It didn't mean I went out and bought the product necessarily, but that I saw something in the medium and its message which I could value in some way. But that's the crux of this isn't it? Ethics. It does seem that what is deemed 'decent' and 'acceptable' in both the practices and presentations of media acting in corporate interest often isn't either.
HC: Most people can't see the extent to which that is true, the extent to which media forms our perception and controls consensus reality.
ME: Well, I think that's the case too.
I saw this movie called The Ad and the Ego. It explored the negative and unrecognized impacts that advertising had on people and society. At one point it had one of its 'talking heads' relate how she was doing a survey to collect data on advertising. She would ask her subjects how much impact they felt advertising had on the choices they made.
"Most," she said-and I'm paraphrasing here, mind.
HC: [chuckles] I'm guilty of.I mean cool with that.
ME: "Most people would say that they felt advertising had little impact on their choices." And then she got that look in her eye and said, "The funny thing is that these same people were often wearing their Budweiser caps and Nike clothing."
HC: Exactly! The media shapes reality in such subtle ways that the mechanisms which operate on us go undetected. Most people are not able to recognize the degree to which they are being played by media agencies because these same agencies continually broadcast the memes that generate the values by which they are judged.
ME: Absolutely! Now, you've been black listed by your peers because of Mack's indiscretion. You used to be part of the manufacture and replication of these same reality shaping memes and meme-complexes, and you used the same sinister sounding tools that you are now decrying. This leads me to ask: where did this change of heart come from-because you can't play in the club no more?
HC: I had misgivings while I was working in advertising. I was hyper aware of my role, especially given my name. My father once cried, "I can't believe I raised a marketer!" My grandfather? Fired for being a communist. I was raised with misgivings towards marketing. However, the idea that marketing is bad is like saying that gravity sucks-it isn't the whole picture. Gravity isn't going away and marketing will always be with us. Given those facts, how do we deal with marketing-how much access to us should be allowed?
ME: That's an interesting analogy. Both gravity and marketing pull us towards something, or more accurate, cause us to fall in line with something. Both are forces which lure by bending space. Gravity bends space-time and marketing bends mindspace. A star in space, the earth under our feet or the colouring of a product's package, the celebrity that endorses the product-these are all factors which cause us to fall: they influence the range of our actions.
HC: Causa latet vis est notissima-'The cause is hidden; the force well known.' Most people can't see the energies of a system. And sometimes those that can see the energies don't know how to wrangle them. My agenda forks here: teach those who see more options for action and teach the willing blind what light feels like. You can't teach somebody to see, but it is possible to show them where the light is or tell them when it appears to me that they are stumbling in the dark. But the blind resent being told they're blind. I don't know what the balance is.
ME: Well I don't think you're alone-you're basically describing Plato's "Cave" analogy there. The struggle to break free from our self-imposed chains and fumble trembling towards the blinding light of 'true sight' is something that few seem to have the courage to take all the way. It hurts to open our eyes to this sort of truth because it means we have to face darkness within our selves.
I feel that deep down each of knows the ways in which we keep ourselves blind and when those are brought to our direct attention by an outside source, well, the reaction is often reflexive and defensive self-denial. I'm not always sure how we get by that either.
HC: That's just it, I'm frustrated by those that can't see the basics. I'm flabbergasted that some think that having a Cadilac drive the president around during his inauguration was happenstance. I find it disgusting. Or at least I want to know the details of sponsorship and know it was fair. I think sponsorship, especially in government, should be transparent.
ME: Certainly it would be foolish to not agree with that-the people have a right to know which corporate interests are behind their representatives.
Let's take a closer look at what you are saying about Cadilacs and presidents.
[clears throat]
Sorry, I was taking a moment to collect my thoughts there.okay, it's kinda' like this: there's a self-perpetuating feed-back/forward loop-a sort of strange attractor there that exists as a function of the relationship between the role of president and the myth of the Cadilac. This strange attractor generates feed-forward by the way these elements are situated in the predominate memeplex of society.
HC: [chuckles] It sounds good, but do you know what you mean?
ME: Heh, yeah. The president is a very powerful and important person, so he's driven around in a Cadilac. The Cadilac is a vehicle for powerful and important people, so putting the president in a Cadi reinforces the idea that he is powerful and important. Putting these elements in this sort of relationship with One and Other while at the same time hyping both the importance of the president and the importance of the vehicle within the majority creates the illusion of status regarding these things.
If we did not believe in the importance of either one of these elements, then this particular attractor looses power over us. It doesn't matter what kind of car the guy is driven around in, he's still the president, or alternatively, we could not care less about the status of the president but still think a Cadilac is a symbol of prestige and power. In either case the juxtaposition of car and role do not reinforce the feed-forward loop that is intended by their relationship with respect to the media's intent. In the best case scenario, perhaps we see through the whole charade of importance and status with regard to both elements. It's only a damn car and isn't the president intended to be, and sorry for my use of the patriarchal cliché here, 'a man of the people'?
HC: Yes. But, most people that think they see this dynamic are blinded by their pride and don't see the full manifestation. I get tired of explaining there is no right wing conspiracy-the right wing is well organized because they have more of the money. Money is an organizing force of culture. Of course they control the information. Kurt Vonnegut says, "whoever gets the media first and holds it owns the world," and I feel this is true.
[chuckles]
The first thing they did was to claim that the media was liberal. If you don't find this worthy of ridicule you don't see the structure of media-you need to read Mickey Z.'s Seven Deadly Spins and Noam Chomsky's Media Control.
Is Noam Chomsky insane?
[pause]
ME: What!?
HC: I think Chomsky is brilliant! But this country doesn't respect intelligence that disagrees with the power elite. Of course they don't. The privilege of the elite is to make the rules that support their position.
[pause]
Playing nomic should be required of all elementary school students-it's important that budding minds learn that the possibility of cooperative living is more fun for everybody.
ME: I entirely agree.
HC: Shit, Ferris Beuller's Day Off so nails the Cameron's of the world: I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it.
ME: Amen brother!
HC: Except the Cameron's of the world fancy themselves as Walruses as they pray to their -isms with money and energy and narcissistic thinking. What are you interested in? Nothing. Sports Center doesn't count as an interest, it's a distraction-nothing but the playing out of a manmade finite game-America is fascinated by the imaginary they have been convinced is real-The greatest trick the devil pulled is to prove he doesn't exist is propaganda, is programming.
[Howard Campbell riffed on a free flow stream of consciousness spiel for about 4 minutes straight here. Most of it I didn't follow, but I could feel his passion through the words he spoke and the way he spoke them. It was kind of like listening to one of those bands that play a lot of noise-individually the bits have little musical effect, yet somehow, the whole thing comes together to create a powerful and intricate composition. I let him wind himself down and then.]
ME: Howard.Howard!
HC: Yeah?
ME: Let me get back to asking you some questions.
HC: Yeah, okay.
ME: In your sessions with Dr. Fink you discuss Sufis and magic in both its stage and occult manifestations. What are your current attitudes and ideas towards the occult? Do you consider yourself a magician?
HC: I'm a businessman. There's no occult! It's a dirty word organized religion assigned to spirituality practiced without a sanctioned church with a large parish and bank account. Wiccan rights are under served. Unitarian Universalists are the largest organized spiritualists that don't seem brainwashed. I'm a spiritual person. I use what I find works. What is the Crowley quote, "what people don't understand they attribute to magick"? Well, it works the other way to, what we attribute to magick we will never understand. Most of the time, I do what my gut says is okay and my head is relatively quiet and calm. That's more than most people. Sure, many religious zealots claim to live in peace, but I feel tension in their gait.
ME: I get what you mean. It seems difficult to reconcile extreme partisan views with being at peace. If people have to hold their views so tight that they must place these views above all others, well, this doesn't seem much like peace to me.
HC: In my head I say "go in peace." When I view them as harmful, I wish them to write from their heart and enjoy chill when they experience down time. Some just rattle in anxiety. I often don't know how to respond. I've found that a lot in my life-I don't know what to say or do. What I've found is that I feel OK about what I'm doing. It's an emotional sensation, sure, but how I actually acted was fine. I think about these things far less than I used to.
ME: Yeah, a little self-confidence goes a long way.
I think what you've said about the Crowley quote is also true. In my experience with magick, no matter how 'scientific' my approach, I can not truly understand what 'the magic' is-it seems rather like trying to claim to 'know' what electricity is: we've no god damn clue! Sure, we know much about how to use it, maybe, and how to extract it from things, but we don't know what it is.
HC: Yes.
ME: So why is it that you feel the Unitarians are not, as you put it, "brainwashed"? Do you feel they are the only large spiritual organization that aren't brainwashed? Please explain.
HC: They aren't teaching Truth. At most they demonstrate some possible methods of inquiry. That discovery is self knowledge. That is more valuable than a static concept of Truth.
I hold that most people don't understand how their mind works because they can't make decent distinctions that are mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive. Sloppy language creates ambiguity. Within this ambiguity a Truth monger can claim mental territory in the unsuspecting. Most people don't know what they know, so they don't know what they don't know and they live on emotional overdrive. People tend to mistake words for thoughts. This all contributes to the efficiency of the media.
Hegel said that a system can't prove itself. Thinking in words about thinking in words often doesn't do shit. I'm interested in being effective. I sometimes struggle with how I can increase my effectiveness. I want to help more people see through organized persuasion. I'll do a magic show just about wherever I'm invited. If somebody can promise me an audience of 23+ people, I'll find a way to get there.
ME: You'll travel anywhere?
HC: Hey, Brian-you realize if we played by the rules right now we'd be in gym?
ME: What?
[Howard takes on a tediously slow voice]
HC: In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?... raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. "Voodoo" economics.
[phone rings; howard laughs and mutters "perfect" and then takes on a whiny voice]
He'll keep calling me, he'll keep calling me until I come over. He'll make me feel guilty. This is uh... This is ridiculous, ok I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go. What - I'LL GO. Shit. Please don't say were not going to take the car home. Please don't say were not going to take the car home. Please don't say were not going to take the car home.
[end whiny voice]
If you had access to a car like this, would you take it back right away?
[beat]
Neither would I.
ME: Howard, I reckon Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a decent enough movie. I recall digging its rebellious vibe when I was young and.
HC: Look don't make me participate in your stupid crap if you don't like the way I do it. You make me get out of bed, you make me come over here. You make me make a phony phone call to Edward Rooney? The man could squash my nuts into oblivion. And-and-and then, and then, you deliberately hurt my feelings.
[Edited for reading ease: Howard continues to do voices and dialogue from Ferris Beuller's Day Off]
*****
[Sound of short, quick grating]
ME: Having a smoke? That sounds like a good idea-I'll have one too. Say, that reminds me about something in that transcript:
I found your view regarding the sale of nicotine gum and the sale of cigarettes illuminating. Why do you think it is that the government continues to allow cigarettes to cost the consumer less-even though they kill-than the gum, which would be a more healthy nicotine delivery mechanism?
HC: Because of the tobacco lobbyists and their political prowess. Duh. This is your first dumb question.
ME: [laughs] Or maybe it's your first dumb answer!
No, I think you have some important insight to offer, let me rephrase the question. In your own opinion, what do you feel that such hypocritical action on the part of a government ought to signal to its citizens?
HC: That they are full of shit. Duh, next question please.
ME: Look, I'm not going to engage in the behaviours that will allow this to transit from great dialogue into a pile of shit. Perhaps I wasn't posing the right question. I didn't mean to aggravate you, Howard.
It's only that your view seems so simple. There are all these agencies set up to mind the health and safety of the public-especially in the whole post 9/11 world-and yet, here is a product which kills people, and mostly through quite miserable, suffering, lingering deaths. By allowing the sale of cigarettes to remain cheaper than the more healthy alternative of nicotine delivered through chewing gum, well, it seems to sort of undermine the credibility and sincerity of these other agencies.
I guess I only wanted to say that you make a great positive thesis towards a serious health problem. And your starting criticism seems to illustrate that the government doesn't actually give a damn about the health and welfare of its citizens. It only seems to be government which protects its own interests.
[Howard and I talk in circles for about 2 minutes. He seemed to feel I was saying his response was "dumb." I finally gave up because he was being a bit of a bully-I started to repeat things like, "you're absolutely right," and the classic, "yes, you are right," until he calmed down and we could continue.]
******
ME: As a reader who has enjoyed much of Kurt Vonnegut's work, I couldn't help but notice you share the same name with the main character in Mother Night. How do you feel about the reference of your name being attached to such a moniker?
HC: It's weird. It is almost like a Hispanic being named Jesus, an Indian being named Siddhartha or a capitalist being named Subversive. Maybe that last name doesn't quite work.
[chuckles of disbelief]
ME: Nope. You're reaching there, Howard.
HC: Yeah. Vonnegut's character lives in a world of ambiguity. He pretends to be of one system while he is working for another system using his job as broadcaster to get his REAL message to those who know how to interpret the codes. I began to feel like it was my moral obligation to teach people the technology I was using in advertising. I wrote TWISP, Manufacturing America and The Longer Line to get the information across-to reveal how the illusions are constructed.
ME: But he did his job so well that people end up believing that he was actually part of the malevolent forces-he ends up persecuted and punished not for the heroic efforts he accomplished, but for the deceit he had to create in order to get the message through. How does this aspect of the name's associations grab you?
HC: Zmag won't let me participate in its summer session. They won't return my emails. I suspect they fear I'm a corporate spy. I have no tribe-that's why I found 23rdian. Actually, it found me. I came across an invitation that read:
You have been searching for us without knowing it. Following oblique references in crudely Xeroxed marginal "samsidat" publications, crackpot mystical pamphlets, mail order courses in "Kaos Magick"-a paper trail and a coded series of rumors spread at street level through circles involved in the illicit distribution of certain controlled substances and the propagation of certain acts of insurrection against the Planetary Work Machine and the Consensus Reality-or perhaps through various obscure mimeographed technical papers on the edges of "chaos science"-through pirate computer networks-or even through pure synchronicity and the pursuit of dreams you are here now. We know something about you, your interests, deeds and desires, works and days. All this and we know where you live.
I had been profiled and joined. Great direct response advertising. No shame in checking out something that describes and defines who you see yourself to be.
ME: It seems to many that you are recruiting cult members, and that the above schpiel is part of It. My friend fenris23 reminded me that RAW has spread a meme that says 'Don't trust anyone with the initials HC'. While fenris gently prompted me to recall that this had mostly to do with Hagbard Celine, how do you feel that such a meme-propagated within the social circles of many of the people who will read your works-is going to affect how you and your ideas are received?
HC: You should listen to Wilson's TSOG CD. Listen to that and then ask me again. Don't ask me such a silly question. Ask a friend. Ask Ferris. Ask the walrus. Ask your god. Read Quantum Psychology and get a grasp of what you know. Fuck, it is only your mind, don't bother learning how it works and then expect other people to take your silly questions seriously. Of course I'm going to jump down your throat you milquetoast wind box.
[I played at being subservient again in order to pacify Howard. He's really frustrating me in some ways. Although, I invited him into this conversation, so I guess a lesson here is to be careful what we invite into our lives.]
*****
ME: Howard, I listened to the podcast available at Gpod and was quite confused as to what was going on there, as am sure most listeners were. Did you have anything to do with that show?
HC: THAT WASN'T ME! That was Ben Mack both times-I don't even sound anything like him. I can't believe Joseph Matheny was that gullible. There's Ben on his show talking about himself stalking me-as me! It's outrageous that Matheny even suggests it might be me.
ME: That was my strongest impression out of the possibilities I was considering.
It's weird how clever and yet disturbed Ben seems. There he is talking as if he was you and he is saying as Howard Campbell that Ben Mack is trying to take over his life! In his delusions he seems to understand what he is doing, but it's from his view of himself as you that he criticizes himself for doing it! I think those tapes he heard have done him more harm than good.
What're your thoughts on this?
HC: What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
[pause]
I don't know. I'm not him. I felt a cliché might be the best way to answer the question. I'm broker than I used to be. I've got that going for me in terms of new emotions to connect with and talk about.
Some friends call me oB, short for O B One, because I sometimes give deep answers. Sometimes I just don't know. My mind is quieter this way.
ME: I can dig that vibe man.
Shit man, in this circle of friends and acquaintances I used to be part of-before it kinda' all disintegrated and people more or less went their own ways due to 'growing up' or 'getting it together' or 'falling further apart' or whatever-some of these people would call me things like "brain-ya-lon," "brainiac," and stuff like that. Plays on my name and the word 'brain,' obviously. There's only one good friend I see regularly who still calls me by any of these names.
[pause]
Anyway, yeah sure, sometimes I know this was meant as a compliment, but yet, sometimes it felt as if people would call me this because some of the shit I like to talk about is so abstract to many people, so foreign, so Other.
[silence]
HC: I see. So you wanted to know about the movie-well let me tell you:
The Pitch, Poker & The Public is a Chris Zube project. I don't know how Ben Mack got a producer credit on that movie. I work with Howard Bloom, Jay Levinson and Mike Caro-I went and interviewed them. I grew up doing magic with Joel Bauer. The video gets at what persuasion is at its root and as a lifestyle. Most people that express an interest in magick don't know what they want to manifest. I asked these master persuaders what they did now that they were wealthy and their secrets to getting wealthy. The final DVD will have interviews with each participant and the overview video, The Pitch, Poker & The Public.
ME: We're running out of time and it seems like you've merely plugged your own video there. You are regularly accused of being a shameless self promoter you know.
HC: That's fair, I guess. I promote myself often and hard. It is my training from advertising. You don't get a grand a day by laying low and saying you are commonplace. I am extraordinary. Fuck me if I don't have the right to say that. I'm not calling myself good, I'm just calling myself not ordinary. I think that is fair.
If I have earned the right to ask something of your reader, it would be: "Write about your experiences."
[pause]
Especially if they relate to Poker Without Cards-or, if you see an opportunity for a Howard Campbell response, just use my name. It isn't my name. My parents took my name from a book-you are just as entitled to be Howard Campbell as I am.
Seriously. Now go to Intellishit.com and click on the buy it now button and write a comment when it connects you to amazon. Fuck that. I don't really need that. I need more people to read Larry Beinhart, Mickey Z .and Robert Anton Wilson. If that's too classical for you, a recent book Join My Cult! makes many of these points and is a good mind fuck. Just see the intellishit for what it is: Truth is not knowable in words.
Here's what I ask-I want readers to go to www.Intellishit.com. Look, I don't know how long Poker Without Cards will be in print. Poker Without Cards is a division of Intellishit Marketing and the finances don't make any sense to me. Ben is offering $23 to people who read Poker Without Cards and don't see The Matrix for 30 days. I haven't heard from Ben in over a week.I think he may be medicated. I think our bank accounts will be hurting if this offer doesn't come down soon.
ME: In the midst of all that name-dropping promotional blitz, you mentioned "intellishit." Say a few words about this please.
HC: Intellishit is what comes out of a politician's mouth. It is how you know 5 is 6. [Howard does a Rooney impression] What is so dangerous about a character like Ferris Bueller is he gives good kids bad ideas.
I gotta go. Watch epic.
http://www.idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/ols-master.html
[phone goes dead]
[end tape]
And so ends the interview that materialized from no where. I'm thankful that Mr. Campbell stepped up to the task and, for all the fast-paced work, it amazes me what we accomplished in the space of a few days. So much more efficient and effective than all that chasing around I had to do with Ben. Straight, to the point, professional: business at its finest.
As soon as I hit save and send this over to Michael, and even though I'm One of the Living Dead (very tired?), I'm checking out what Howard was talking about at www.Intellishit.com.
Thanks for reading,
b.e. hydomako
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