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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Game 324: The Keys of Acheron (1981)

As an expansion of Hellfire Warrior, the game has no main title screen.

The Keys of Acheron

United States

Automated Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released in 1981 for Apple II and TRS-80, 1982 for Atari 800

Date Started: 5 April 2019

Date Ended: 5 April 2019

Total Hours: 5

Difficulty: Easy-Medium (2.5/5), but heavily adjustable by player

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to remember that the Dunjonquest series existed. Its first edition, The Temple of Apshai, released in 1979, gets my vote for the first true commercial RPG. Sure, Beneath Apple Manor, Dungeon Campaign, and Space technically preceded it in 1978, but none of them are what we would consider fully-featured RPGs. Temple of Apshai and is paragraph book, full of evocative descriptions of rooms and treasures, was the first earnest attempt to bring the essence of a tabletop RPG module to the computer. Co-creators Jeffrey A. Johnson and Jon Freeman should be names that we invoke as frequently as Richard Garriott or Brian Fargo.

A typical Acheron screen has me fighting a fungusman in a twisty cavern. A treasure can be seen beyond him.

The Temple of Apshai was a huge success, ported to nearly every platform that existed at the time, and it naturally generated a slew of sequels. Oddly, Epyx released several different sets of sequels for the original game. The first set began with Hellfire Warrior (1980; link to my review), which added Levels 5-8 to Temple’s Level 1-3. This series continued with The Keys of Acheron (1981) and Danger in Drindisti (1982). At the same time, Temple continued onto a different set of dungeon levels with Upper Reaches of Apshai (1981) and Curse of Ra (1982). In between these titles, Epyx published a few “microquests” using the Dunjonquest engine but with a fixed character: Morloc’s Tower (1979), The Datestones of Ryn (1979), and Sorcerer of Siva (1981). The engine also spun off two horrid action games with no RPG elements: StarQuest: Rescue at Rigel (1980) and Star Warrior (1980). The whole series wrapped up with the terrible Gateway to Apshai (1983), which couldn’t even spell its own name right on the title screen. Dunjonquest also inspired a series of simplified diskmag and shareware titles, including Quest 1 (1981), Super Quest (1983), Dungeons, Dragons, and Other Perils (1984), and Cavequest (1985).

I bypassed Acheron in 2014, claiming that I couldn’t find it, but I must not have tried very hard because the Azimov archive says that it’s been uploaded there for at least a decade. (And thanks to commenters J.D. and metallik for helping me get it running.) I probably just thought of it as an expansion to Hellfire Warrior, which I’d already covered. But I figure it’s worth taking a second look now, partly to remember the Dunjonquest series, but mostly because it was the first CRPG scenario designed by Paul Reiche III, co-founder of Toys for Bob, and co-creator of, yes, Star Control and Star Control II.

This was Reiche’s first computer game credit after a couple of years designing tabletop Dungeons & Dragons modules for TSR, and his experience can be seen in the quality of the backstory and in-game descriptions. The setup is that the character has been asked by the wizard Abosandrus to recover four magical gems–emerald, amethyst, ruby, and sapphire–from the dungeon. The gems, known as the “Keys of Acheron,” have the power to open or close rifts between worlds, and Abosandrus wants to use them to prevent the immortal demon lord Kronus from invading. The dungeon takes up four levels, labeled “Abode of the Dragon,” “The Temple in the Jungle,” “The Crystal Caves,” and “The Shadowland of Kronus.” The game does the same weird thing that Hellfire Warrior did where the first and third levels have room numbers (and associated descriptions in the book) but the second and fourth don’t.

Kronus himself appears randomly throughout the game’s levels and cannot be killed.

The game is a bit tricky to get going because it requires the original Hellfire Warrior disk for booting, character creation, and shopping. The Acheron manual tells you bluntly that you’ll screw everything up if you don’t follow its instructions to the letter, and for a while I couldn’t find the instructions. Fortunately, as usual, a helpful commenter came through.

My character at the beginning of this session. I created him as a veteran of Hellfire Warrior.

Character creation thus precedes exactly as Hellfire Warrior, where you can randomly roll a Level 1 amateur or manually enter your own statistics and create an indomitable titan right away. After you buy your melee weapon, armor, bow, and arrows, you can choose to spend excess money on various draughts and elixirs. These modify your statistics and abilities for the next dungeon session only. You can also stop by Malaclypse the Mage and get your weapon or armor enchanted (up to +9) and buy a few magic items that only last the duration of the adventure.

Available magic items.

In one last screen before you enter, you can donate money to Benedic the Cleric’s mission, which seems to increase the chance that Benedic is the one that finds and resurrects you when you die. Otherwise, you may be found by Lowenthal the Wizard, who takes all magic items that you own before returning you to the town for resurrection; or Olias the Dwarf, who takes all your items; or a random monster, who just eats you.

I confess I reloaded save states in such circumstances.

Once inside the dungeon, the game behaves just like the earlier incarnations. You use “R,” “L,” and “V” to turn and rotate the character and then type a number from 1 to 9 indicating how many steps to move in your facing direction. “S” searches for traps, “E” searches for secret doors (you have to be pretty close to the door), and “O” opens them.

Finding a secret door.

When monsters appear, you can try to shoot them at a distance with a regular arrow (“F”) or a magic arrow (“M”), or wait until they get close and use “A,” “T,” and “P” for attack, thrust, and parry. When the monsters get your hit points down, you can heal with a salve (“H”), nectar (“N”), or elixir (“Y”) if you’ve purchased them. If the room has a treasure, you grab it with “G.” The controls are all quite intuitive except for movement, which never stops being clunky.

Melee combat with a grifffin. There are, alas, no spells in the game.

You have to be careful about stamina. The game tracks encumbrance (including weapons, armor, and found treasures), and the faster you move with more weight, the faster your stamina depletes. Standing still causes it to (slowly) recharge, and you don’t want to be caught in combat in such situations. I had fewer problems with it here than in the original Hellfire Warrior.

The rooms and corridors are all uniformly dull–the top-down equivalent of Wizardry‘s wireframes from the same year. (There are mild icon animations but nothing to get excited about.) This is where the Dunjonquest series is greatly enhanced by the monster, trap, room, and treasure descriptions in the accompanying manual. On the screen, you may enter Room 16, but with the manual, you know you’ve entered a cave where:

The air is intolerably hot. To the west you can see roaring flames. As you make your way through the passage, you stumble over something. Looking down, you see the fragments of a huge egg. It would seem that the Dragon has borne young ones.

If you meet one of the baby dragons, you consult the manual to see that:

Although this creature resembles its parent closely in its scaled, wormlike form, it is fortunately much smaller, typically 6-8 feet in length. Even though the immature beast cannot breathe flame (and luckily so!), it will attack anything it meets with ferocity.

You defeat him and head down the corridor, only to accidentally stumble in a dragonfire trap! The manual has you covered there, too:

With a titanic roar, the corridor fills with the burning flame of the Dragon’s breath. You should have been quieter, more careful. Now it knows you are here.

But eventually you defeat your foes and pick up the treasure in the room. The screen tells you that you’ve acquired Treasure #8:

A quaint piece of giantish artwork, a skull carved from a huge agate. Surely some collector of such things would buy it, but for how much?

As noted, levels 2 and 4 don’t have any room descriptions–some limitation imposed by the game basically faking the Hellfire Warrior application into thinking it’s playing Hellfire Warrior levels. But to compensate, Reiche used treasure descriptions more as encounter flags rather than literal treasures. Sometimes, you find healing items that can be repeatedly taken. Other times, you find a clue, as in “a severed hand . . . clutching spasmodically” that eventually “points north, up the corridor.” And still other times, it’s just flavor text, as in “the floating remains of one of the kraken’s more recent meals.”

The overall dungeon designs are superior to the earlier games in the series. You start in the “Abode of the Dragon,” a classic dungeon of rooms and passages featuring trolls, ogres, giants, grues, and the titular dragon. These are not Level 1 monsters, so you’re expected to bring an experienced character. The room descriptions have you begin in a field and (depending on the way you go) either enter a tunnel immediately or follow a shoreline around to a cave entrance. They both converge on the dragon’s lair, one via a straight path through monsters and treasures and the other taking a shortcut through a secret door. A side area leads to a unicorn’s grove, where a non-hostile unicorn lets you take an opal necklace. Other treasures found throughout the area include a magic sword and a healing potion; I think this is the first Dunjonquest game where any of the found treasures can remain a permanent part of your character.

The game’s take on a “grue.”

The demon Kronus occasionally pops up in all of the levels, and there’s nothing to do but run away. The manual says that he cannot be killed, and my experience bears that out.

The first Key of Acheron, a “spherical ruby gem as large as your fist,” is found beyond the slain dragon. Overall, the level has more valuable treasures than the others, and if you thoroughly explore, by the time you return to the surface, you’ll have enough money to enchant your sword and armor and drink every elixir in the apothecary’s shop before your next trip.

The first key lies beyond the dragon.

“The Temple in the Jungle” offers no room descriptions and simply has you navigating a fairly open level with different types of dinosaurs, giant dragonflies, and Sserpa (snake god) shamans. For the first time in the series, this level has an adventure game-like quality where the “rooms” don’t lie in consistent directions, and the map warps on itself. You have to create a little node map to find your way through. You eventually find the “amethyst key” in a room occupied by a giant tarantula.

Fighting a giant dragonfly in what we have to imagine is a trackless jungle.

“The Crystal Caves” puts you in an extinct volcano. There are some interesting “trap” areas that the game suggests are deep pools full of piranhas from which you have to climb your way out. Mechanically, you do this by searching for secret doors, but a player with an imagination will appreciate the game’s attempts to do something clever with limited mechanics.

Battling lava beasts, lizards, fungus men, salt slimes and dodging earthquakes and cave-ins (again, all described in detail in the manual), you eventually find your way through secret doors and recover the “emerald key” in a cavern.

I collect the third gem.

The last level is called “The Shadowland of Kronus.” Like the jungle, it lacks room descriptions, but here almost none of the treasures are actually treasures. Instead, they generally contain clues or taunts from Kronus.

Some of the treasure descriptions from the final level.

The level takes the longest to explore. Eventually, you find your way through a secret door to a large, open water area, where the game uses a treasure encounter to suggest you’re paddling around on a boat. Waves and “black rain” do damage to the character while you’re attacked by shadow bats, fiends, and krakens. Another node map is necessary to chart a path through the area.

Release the kraken!

You arrive ultimately on the shores of a citadel (this is all related via treasure paragraphs) and a walkway where numerous gaps suggest a “broken railing”; going through these gaps leads to instant death. Eventually, you come to Kronus’s chambers with side-rooms for a torture chamber, library, and bedroom. Each room has appropriate monsters, like wraiths, astral skulls, and automatons. I particularly enjoyed the treasure encounter in the library, with its Lovecraftian allusions:

You stand in a library filled with books, scrolls, and tablets of arcane and eldritch knowledge. Looking around, you find such titles as De Mysteriis Vermis, The King in Yellow, and a complete edition of the Pnatonik Manuscripts. Resting on a nearby table you find a particularly interesting volume entitled The Necronomicon. When you open the book you find it filled with incomprehensible writings, and you feel an unholy chill pass through your body. Perhaps some wizard will buy this strange librum.

A secret door leads from Kronus’s chambers to the final area. You pass through a room of fake sapphire keys (and lots of monsters) before arriving in a room with Kronus himself guarding the real final key. As before, there’s no point in fighting Kronus. You have to dart up, grab the key, find a secret door in the north wall, and escape the dungeon before he kills you.

The final encounter.

Alas, just like its predecessor, the game is disappointing in its lack of acknowledgement that you’ve completed the main quest. Treasures are ephemeral things; they disappear, converted to gold, the moment the game transitions from the dungeon disk to the program disk. Thus, there isn’t even any way for it to record the fact that you’ve found each of the four keys on their appropriate levels. Even if there was, it wouldn’t matter, because the moment you leave the Acheron dungeon disk, you’re back in the Hellfire Warrior program, which doesn’t even know that Acheron exists. As with so many other places in the Dunjonquest series, you have to use your imagination to return the gems to the wizard Abosandrus and seal Kronus in his own dimension.

The appearance of Treasure #1 four times in a row (this is the last) is the only “proof” that I’ve won.

The Dunjonquest entries have always evoked tabletop modules, but this is perhaps the most sophisticated of the lot–a testament to Reiche’s prowess as a dungeon master. In a GIMLET, I rated it 24, two points higher than Hellfire Warrior, apparently feeling better about both encounters and the economy.

I’ll try to check out Danger in Drindisti in the future. After that, the Dunjonquest series falls apart, perhaps more from the breakup of Automated Simulations (and its rebranding as Epyx) than from anything to do with the quality of the series. If the Dunjonquest series had continued and grown, we might have enjoyed Gold Box-quality games before the Gold Box.

****

I’d like to ask a favor of my U.S. readers. I’m looking for places across the United States that sell Diet Coke with Ginger Lime in 20-ounce bottles. Exactly that–no other flavors, please, and no cans. Just Diet Coke with Ginger Lime in 20-ounce bottles. If you happen to see them at a local convenience store, drug store, or whatever, I would appreciate an e-mail to [email protected]. Thank you!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-324-the-keys-of-acheron-1981/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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nicholasmeyler · 3 years

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Some Essays

Wolfy Said I Have a “Pedigree”

NICHOLAS MEYLER·SUNDAY, AUGUST 2, 2020·6 MINUTES

Based on my research, I have concluded that "Great Genius" is actually the name of a Breed, not so much as an accomplishment, or appellation received from making a lasting and brilliant contribution to Society. Rather, it is more like the term "Great Dane", used when referring to a specific breed of dog. There is nothing really great about Danes, although they are fine people, quite often, and I certainly don't want to sow any racist Anti-Danish sentiment on Facebook. Rather, I am simply clarifying the use of the term.

Scientists have concluded that Intelligence is basically hereditary, so I conducted my research on the genetics and genealogy of the matter. I was partly inspired by my familial relationship with the Nobel Peace Prizewinner, Norman Borlaug, who has been credited with saving one billion lives, due to his research in genetics and agricultural science.

My hypothesis, if you will, is simply that Genius runs in families; so I compiled a small family tree of 54,000+ individuals going back 4000 years to test this hypothesis. I realized that a typical example of the "Great Genius" breed might be Isaac Newton, whom I found myself related to along the Pendleton line.

Naturally, I also traced my lineage to Einstein, as well I could, and concluded that we might have shared a common direct ancestor some 500 years ago, since Einstein's family lived in an area also inhabited by my direct ancestors. Reasoning that Einstein himself had some 'clout' in that community, I thought he would be a fitting research subject. He, like Newton, was also known for some discoveries related to Physics.

Prior to that, I had already figured out my ancestral relationships to Lord Byron, Percival Bysse Shelley, John Dryden, and John Donne. Three of those (Byron, Donne, and Shelley) also experienced and wrote about Doppelganger phenomena (which I have repeatedly written about myself, based on the acoustic evidence of hearing my own name in music composed hundreds of years before my birth).

The very ancient surname of "Meyler" is cognate with the legendary wizard "Merlin" of Arthurian legend. Merlin, according to most accounts, was primarily famed for his extraordinary gift of Prophecy, and the fact that he aged in reverse. Today, we would refer to these phenomena as “Superluminal Information Transmission” (or “Reception”), and ‘Metabolic Time-travel’ (i.e. “reverse-aging”). I am involved in both of the fields, myself (the former as a World-leading researcher, and the latter as a professional recruiter).

‘Sir Thomas Mallory’ (one of three Knights with the same name alive at the same time in England) is also a relative of mine (17th great uncle), and the name "Mallory" itself is very similar to Meilyr, Maglorix, or Malleore (variants of Meyler spelling). Mallory was the English nobleman who recorded the epic “La Morte D’Arthur”, which is still revered as the greatest account of Arthur, Merlin, and Camelot in English literature. Before him, Giraldus Cambrensis was the second author in antiquity to write of the myth of Merlin (before Mallory and after Geoffrey of Monmouth) and identified him as a man named "Meilyr" who was able to find errors and lies in the previous text written about Merlin. Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) was my 1st cousin 25 times removed. Speaking of 17th great-uncles, Geoffrey Chaucer was the father of Thomas Chaucer (Parliament Speaker of the House of Commons) who was another 17th great-uncle of mine.

Contemporary with Giraldus Cambrensis was the writing of Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, one of the most revered great Welsh Bards of the 12th century. His works are still widely read, and considered 'immortal poetry'. His family was chosen to be the Royal Bards of Wales for a full century (three generations of Meilyrs). His poetry was frequently panegyric about my 25th great grandfather King Owain Gwynnedd. It is apparent that Gwalchmai, King Owain, and Giraldus Cambrensis were all quite well acquainted with one another. Gwalchmai, moreover, is also widely cited as being another great writer who amplified the Arthur/Merlin mythology extensively.

The one ancient Welsh Bard whose poetry is still most extant (e.g. preserved) is Daffyd ap Gwilym, who is my 18th great grandfather. This, again, is a sign of the hereditary nature of the true 'Great Genius" breed, which I can trace back before the Meilyr Bards to Owain ap Hywel (907-987 AD), my 29th great grandfather.

We cannot help what we are, yet we are still ennobled by the way scholars, for example, embrace the use of the term "Bard" when describing William Shakespeare (a mere in-law of mine, it appears). Shakespeare's daughter married into my family, while (since Shakespeare was the son of first cousins), he is also somehow an in-law via another path altogether (first cousin once removed of husband of first cousin fifteen times removed). Thus, the honorific “Bard” is sometimes even bestown on mere ‘wanna-be greats’ who marry into the right family.

On the purely academic side, and apart from any real ‘thought’ or ‘intellect’, at least I am a 3rd cousin of John Harvard (9x removed). John Harvard’s grandfather Thomas Rogers (my 10th great-grandfather) lived a couple of blocks away from William Shakespeare in Avon. My great-great-grandfather was the founder of UCLA (taking up the first collection to establish a State College in Los Angeles, back in the 1880’s). Another ancestor, a ninth great-grandfather, owned the mansion that became the very first permanent building on the Yale University campus. My great-grandfather on my father’s mother’s side, Albert Carlos Jones, Jr. was the first Opera Impresario in Los Angeles, and worked for the founder of USC. He was also the youngest person ever to have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, at that time. With respect to another West-coast school, my other great grandfather J.J. Meyler, who designed the Los Angeles Harbor, trounced Leland Stanford in a famous public debate about where the harbor should be built.

Also, perhaps footnote-worthy is the fact that my direct ancestors founded both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. So, while academia tends to breed a more docile sort of mind, simpler, simpering, pandering for approval of outrageously liberal and ignorant professors and tending towards mediocrity -- being on the ‘Founder’ side is somewhat different -- more disruptive, more radical, more innovative.

Such research, as it stands, has convinced me that "Great Genius" breeds true, and that, like "Great Danes" we are a distinct breed and should simply use this term, however modestly, when describing ourselves. This acceptance of the term is not gratuitous, vain, or boastful. Rather, it is really self-effacing, and humble. We must conform to the standards of the breed, and recognize that nothing we do will ever change our status, whether or not we invent, discover, or create anything, or nothing. We are not responsible for ourselves.

Gwalchmai ap Meilyr’s most famous poem, by far, is “Gorhoffedd”, meaning “The Boast”. Still famous after 850+ years, this is a great example of transcendence of the temporal world. We simply are, and we are not boastful.

'Wolfy' and the Pedigree: A Story of Superluminal Information Transmission

· Published on May 18, 2017

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Nicholas Meyler

Leading Executive Recruiter/Headhunter with (nearly) 30,000 Connections @NicholasMeyler on Twitter

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I’m tired of the rather staid and implausible edict of “Science” which states that Information cannot be transferred or transmitted at Superluminal velocities… which is to say, sending a message from “Future” or “Present” to “Past” cannot be achieved. I offer merely one of my many own personal experiences herein, that dissolves this fantasy of Physicists by clear-cut example. Scientists have contended for a long while, in their efforts to interpret Albert Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity”, that even mere quantum ‘Information’ (or ‘signal’, or ‘meaning’, essentially) is not transmissible at velocities faster than “c”, the constant denoting the speed of light traveling in a vacuum.

This numerical value is 186,282 miles per second, which is equal to 300,000 kilometers per second. These numbers as upper limits of claimed inviolability of ‘lightspeed’ are widely accepted, almost to the point of autocratic dictum. I believe that these claims are largely correct, but have exceptions. Notably, recent Scientific research has shown that light can actually be accelerated to speeds even hundreds of times faster than the conventional limit of “c”.

Physicists like Ray Chiao of UC Berkeley, Guenter Nimtz of University of Cologne, and Lijun Wang of the NEC Institute for Advanced Studies have all demonstrated that pulses of light can actually be sent (in special conditions) at velocities much higher than the ‘known’ limit of speed. The conventional caveat, however, is that “Information” itself cannot be transferred or transmitted at superluminal rates, because what is actually being transmitted in these cases, is merely a portion or ‘front-end’ of what is called the ‘wave-packet’.

Physicists disregard this achievement of superluminal velocity as an exception to the Einsteinian equations simply because only a portion of the light-wave really made it through to the receiver. Guenter Nimtz formulated the reply that even if only the ‘front-end’ of the intended signal actually is transmitted, it is still recognizable and does qualify as Information. I tend to agree with him. In his 1993 experiments, he was able to transmit the sound impulses of Mozart’s 40th Symphony in G minor at a rate of 4.3x lightspeed. In other words, the signals were actually transmitted (via quantum tunneling) before the process was even initiated. Still, physicists argue about whether these actually constitute ‘Information’/‘Signals’.

This is not just a semantic debate, since Einstein’s Theory (and the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction equations) show that any object (including a photon, which has a rest-mass below 10^exp -27 electron-volts) with non-zero ‘rest-mass’ would have to acquire infinite mass, if it exceeded lightspeed. A rather clever way out of this (which reconciles ‘observation-data’ [i.e. facts] and theory [i.e. speculation]) is that a ‘signal’ might consist purely of vibrations, or “phonons”, which are really massless, and occur in ‘elastic’ structures.

The great composer Iannis Xenakis compared “phonons” to ‘particles or granules’ of sound, in his textbook “Musiques Formelles”. In fact, he based his entire theory of musical composition on this concept of ‘granular sound’ and used his extreme knowledge of Chemical Physics and Mathematics to create music based on the idea of manipulation of ‘sound-masses’ and ‘sound-clouds’ via abstract mathematics, much of which was based on Ancient Greek thought.

Guenter Nimtz’ more recent work (2009) has been on the idea of “Superluminal” (i.e. “Virtual” as in the Physics of Richard Feynmann) ‘particles’ or ‘quanta’ of vibration, which is what sound is caused by – all sounds are merely vibrations that occur in some medium, whether it be air, the floor of a concert venue where music is much too loud for good health, etc. Given that the Einsteinian “Prohibition” on faster-than-lightspeed Information transfer is based entirely on the impossibility of accelerating objects (or quanta) which possess ‘non-zero rest mass’ – What prohibits the possibility of accelerating completely massless ‘quanta’ of vibration to superluminal rates – i.e. thereby sending ordered vibrations into the Past?_____________________________________________________________

It was in the year 1989, I believe, that I purchased a CD album of Wolfgang Mozart’s “Salzburg Symphonies”, composed when he was a youth below the age of 16. Despite his age, however, Mozart’s enormous precocity and intellect enabled him to compose music which is highly enduring, and permits many listenings.

The simplicity of the Salzburg Symphonies is undeniable, but they remain as amazing testament to the genius of ‘Wolfy’, who could create immortal symphonies still beloved by many, centuries after his death. It is on track 19 of the album I have of Jaap Schroeder, Christopher Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music performing “The Symphonies Salzburg 1766-1772” that the untamed “Wolfy” (aka Mozart) launches into what I once thought was a slanderous diatribe against me, wherein he accused me of having a “pedigree”, which I naturally thought was quite offensive, given the context of someone with a nickname of “Wolfy” (which is highly suggestive of an undomesticated species of canine).

Canines, to my knowledge (at that time) were the sorts of creatures who had ‘pedigrees’, and I incontestably took offence at Mozart’s apparent speech synthesis directed towards me. I was, generally speaking, rather appalled by the apparent slight, but tried to understand it in the context of the youthful, brash super-genius Mozart taunting a fan or admirer (me) from the distant future (over 200 years later).

Please bear in mind that these thoughts first occurred to me, listening to this album/CD, around 1989, when I lived in Van Nuys, CA (at 14333 Haynes St.) in a fairly inexpensive apartment in a rather poor neighborhood – although it is true that I lived within a few blocks of a Tchaikovsky competition pianist, a drummer from ‘Iron Butterfly’ (who lived upstairs), and a successful composer named Alexandra Shapiro. Alex Shapiro was beautiful and very intelligent. I remember discussing Stephen Hawking with her, and how strongly she felt sympathy for his physical condition.

Apparently, I am not the only party who has had reason to contemplate the “pedigree” remarks of Mozart, since one need only Google “Mozart, pedigree” to find the following information: http://www.pedigreequery.com/mozart3. It would appear that others have, at least on some level, also connected the cognitively dissonant notes of “Wolfy” and “pedigree” rather clearly. My assumption of, and extreme irritation at, Wolfy’s unintended jape/jibe/jab at my ego, was erroneous, though. I learned some 23 years later, while trying to work out my Ancestry , that a “pedigree” is also something ascribed to humans; in particular, those who descend from long lines of ancestry and/or royalty.

Although I had no knowledge of it, originally, I do actually have a ‘pedigree’ which extends back over a thousand years. Even without knowledge of having a ‘pedigree’, I did have a pedigree, it seems. What is remarkable about this, though, is that I perceived and ‘heard’ Mozart’s comments which seemed to be directed precisely towards me, in English language, with such vividness that I truly thought I was being personally insulted by the brilliant (but highly juvenile at the age of 14-16) Mozart even though his synthetic speech comments (assuming that they are real) were perhaps actually intended as a compliment. I utterly rejected the idea that I was “Mozart’s dog” and was being teased about my inferior intellect/good breeding, because I knew nothing of my ancient ancestry, and because I had no idea that a “pedigree” was even a term that could be applied to Humans, without condescension.

So, now that I have researched my family tree extensively, including with DNA comparisons of many other people, I know that I am related to royalty with lineage that perhaps goes (arguably or not) back to 2000 BC. I would suggest that this result, which I would have found anathematic in 1989, is an actual state of fact which was communicated to me, somehow, via speech synthesis using purely instrumental modalities in that 19th track of the album, composed by Wolfgang Mozart around 1770-1776.

This strikes me as very strong evidence of the reality of Superluminal Information Transmission (or Transfer), simply because: (1) the concept of being told by a record album performance of music written over 200 years ago that I (personally) have a ‘pedigree’ is highly odd; (2) the indisputability of that acoustic perception, on my part, is certain, because I have been able to describe the perceptions and thoughts I had as a consequence, in detail; (3) the odds against anyone having a ‘pedigree’ (or family tree) which contains 40,000 known individuals is fairly extreme, so there can be no mistaking the correctness of the assertion.

From this one example (and I have many others), it appears to me that the existence of Superluminal Information Transmission is a certain fact, despite many Physicists' claims that it violates “Relativity Theory”, and is therefore impossible.

Henceforth, let us abbreviate “Superluminal Information Transmission” as “S.I.T.”

“SIT, Wolfy! SIT!”

Battle of The Majors: Engineering vs. Philosophy

· Published on August 24, 2020

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Nicholas Meyler

Leading Executive Recruiter/Headhunter with (nearly) 30,000 Connections @NicholasMeyler on Twitter

24 articles

I just read a really interesting article by a clever writer named Kristina Grob, a Philosophy instructor at University of South Carolina Sumter. The article discussed the long-term benefits of a Philosophy degree in terms of paying ones’ bills and earning a living, as opposed to other majors like Engineering, which is obviously more geared towards practical applications and material success.

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/08/06/want-good-job-major-philosophy?fbclid=IwAR3mE_MT25ZboA7pdoquawknRH9AvhykYrLSTUW1ZLzUv2Vdobs38NXot-k

I read the article with particular interest because I majored in both fields, at separate schools, to obtain two Bachelor’s degrees. The first was in Philosophy at Princeton, and the second in Chemical Engineering at Cal State Northridge. Even though my family had been engineers for four generations before me, I was the rebellious one who wanted to have a broader mind and wanted to set out on a new path.

My father and grandfather both had Mechanical Engineering degrees from Cornell, and my grandfather was even a Cornell Instructor. My paternal great-grandfather was a Military Engineer from West Point (top in his class, except for the fellow-student he tutored). His name was James J. Meyler and he won perhaps the most important public debate of the early twentieth century vs. Leland Stanford, known as “The Free Harbor Contest”, and was responsible for picking the location and beginning the dredging and construction for the Los Angeles Harbor, which was the largest harbor ever built for many years. There was a street named after him in San Pedro, near the harbor. He also had Army ships named after him, and his portrait stood in the L.A. Army Headquarters for 50+ years.

Even his father, my great-great grandfather (also named Nickolas Meyler, like myself), who was an un-degreed Irish immigrant of the potato-famine, was a master carpenter who successfully filed his own patent for a roof-forming machine –- technology which I have been told by Construction professionals is still used on multi-million dollar mansions in Malibu today.

So, why would I study Philosophy instead?

I didn't want to conform to my family's expectations. And, probably because I badly wanted an education in the Humanities. In fact, I took 13 classes in Philosophy at Princeton (more than any other undergrad I knew) and another 6 in Comparative Literature. Philosophy was the highest-ranked department in the World at the time, so it appealed to me because of the challenge. The thought of earning a living never even occurred to me at the time, I was so impassioned to learn the truths of the Universe.

Towards the end of Senior year, I had some conversations with people about “the real world”. One friend who was a fellow Philosophy major in many of my classes was the grand-daughter of two Nobel winners on her mother’s side, while her father was President of Harvard. Even she, with a mother who was a Philosophy professor (and later a best-selling author), made remarks like “We Philosophy majors are the most worthless people out there.”

After I graduated, I began to realize that it might actually be hard to get a job when Philosophy hadn’t really exactly prepared me for one. I had heard of Philosophers in Europe putting up a shingle and charging $100 an hour for providing advice on Life, etc., but I didn’t think I could make that model work for me. I ended up taking the next year off and read 160 books. My parents were incredibly generous with me, very tolerant and understanding. They realized that I had been through an ‘existential crisis’, trying to find some sense of self-worth and meaning in Life. I also had a peculiar psychosomatic ailment which was attacks of hiccups that went on and on intermittently, for many months.

Finally, my parents insisted that I get a job. Since I was contemplating a possible career in Law, it seemed appropriate that I should take advantage of my family’s personal lawyer being the Executor for the J. Paul Getty Museum Estate. I got a job in the mail-room at a company called Musick, Peeler, and Garrett which entailed mailing enormous checks and documents to members of the Getty family.

I could read a book on the bus to the office, and had hundreds of attorneys to talk with and ask questions about Law. I learned a great deal, met some great people, and eventually began to understand that I was not the type of person who should be a lawyer. This was probably a good way to learn that I was not cut-out for that particular profession.

Eventually, family tradition began to influence me, and I resolved to study Chemical Engineering. I think there were several reasons for this, including my family’s predilection for Engineering, and the fact that I had always liked Chemistry. I also was fascinated with the music of Iannis Xenakis, a Composer/Architect who wrote music about Chemical Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics. I was led back into Engineering by way of the Humanities. I had always been especially good in Science and Math, so I thought it made a lot of sense; plus, it seemed pretty assured that I could manage to make a living at it.

So, a few years later, I did graduate with a Chemical Engineering degree and was able to find an entry-level Chemist job in the Electroplating industry. Here I was working with people who were shop-owners that made $500,000 per year… this was obviously something that made money. I also realized, though, that repeated exposure to toxic chemicals, cyanide, sulfuric acid, hydrofluoric acid, etc. was not really all that appealing.

For that reason, I eventually transitioned to a sales career-path – selling plating chemicals for an esoteric but fascinating process of auto-catalytic deposition of nickel phosphorus (i.e. “electroless nickel”). I learned that the communication and language skills I had acquired while studying Philosophy actually had value in terms of making it easier to explain concepts and make persuasive arguments. I was able to use reason and logic to achieve sales of product.

This was something I hadn’t really expected. All of the sudden, Philosophy actually had a practical application. I could use logic and reasoning to present rational reasons for customers to buy the products I was hawking, and could make them feel good about using them.

Eventually, of course, I transitioned into the career of Executive Search, where I have been for the past 30 years. I use my skills in Engineering and Philosophy both, on a daily basis. Philosophy is very helpful for strategic thinking, ethics, and selling of ‘intangibles’. Engineering, equally, is a passion that is fortuitous to have. Nothing is more exciting to me than cutting-edge Science and Technology being applied at the highest competitive levels to achieve commercial success and successful productization.

The truth, is, at least according to Kristen Grob, that Philosophy majors earn more than their counterpart majors, and maybe as much as Engineering majors. I was shocked with her statement, but it seems to have some facticity. I found it hard to believe that the pursuit of Non-material Wisdom could somehow equate with Science based on the nature of Matter (i.e. Chemistry).

In 30 years of placing Scientists and Engineers, I have only once encountered another person with Bachelor’s degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Philosophy. Only one other person, and I have about 30,000 resumes on file, with probably over 200,000 personal contacts over my career.

What do the facts really say? Since I work with Engineers and Scientists, of course I’m not so likely to see resumes of other Philosophy majors. That doesn’t mean they can’t make money. Some statistics say that the average Philosophy graduate makes $80,000 per year. Certainly, this is comparable to what Engineers earn.

Realistically speaking, would I be the Engineering Headhunter I am today, without having had a Philosophy degree? Probably not. I think that the communication skills alone that I learned were priceless. Having the ability to communicate well is not always common among Engineers. Both disciplines involve problem-solving, but only Philosophy focuses on persuading others of the correctness of one’s viewpoint. This element is neglected in most Engineering curricula. I do think that there should be more of a hybridization between the two fields. It can only help.

Meanwhile, I must also admit that I am the most-followed “Philosopher/Engineer” on Twitter in the World.

Is that worth any money?

Probably not. But it’s a whole lot more fun!

Was Shakespeare Truly a Bard? A Headhunter's Opinion

· Published on January 18, 2019

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Nicholas Meyler

Leading Executive Recruiter/Headhunter with (nearly) 30,000 Connections @NicholasMeyler on Twitter

24 articles

Popular wisdom says that ‘Bards’ are those great story-tellers whose tales are embraced by the audience, not only once, but over and over again, for generations. The idea of a Bard conjures up names like Homer, Shakespeare, and perhaps few others. Reality is quite a bit different, though.

Etymology of the word “Bard” shows that it is of Welsh origin, specifically referring to the great Poet/Singer/Musician/Warriors who were responsible for creating and retelling great ballads like the ancient epic 'Mabinogion', or the King Arthur legend, which is part of 'Mabinogion'.

Owing to unique circumstances, it was in ancient Wales that the Bardic tradition first arose. The culture of Wales was such that the early Princes sponsored official court poets (i.e. “Gogynfeirdd”) who shared many of the same privileges as royalty. In fact, in certain ways, Bards were actually viewed as being even superior to the Kings. Tradition had it that the greatest fear among Nobility was the ever-present possibility that they might be satirized for being unkind or ungenerous to the Bards ("Poet-Gods"). In at least one case, legend tells of a King who died of shame from being scorned by his Bard, Taliesin.

Perhaps the first great Bard was Taliesin. His 6th century poems still exist. The largest number of extant great poems by a Bard are those by Daffyd ap Gwilym (1320-1350), 170 of whose poems still exist. The preponderance of Daffyd’s poems were about Nature and Erotica, filled with a great sense of humor. Yet, it was the Meilyr family of Bards that were the most famous family of Bards that ever lived, being the official court poets of Wales for over a century, and three generations... Meilyr Bryddyd was the first of these, and his religious poems are still known. His son was Gwalchmai, who had at least two sons who were also official Bards of the Princes. Thus, the Meilyr dynasty in Wales established the greatest tradition of factual Bards in human history.

Common lore tells us that Shakespeare was a 'Bard', since author of 37 known still-revered plays and several poems and the set of sonnets. Mere casual reference to "The Bard" often elicits thoughts of William Shakespeare (or "Wm Choxpur" as he sometimes wrote, in addition to perhaps 10 other spellings, indicating a possible degree of illiteracy, by today's standards). "The Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon", or "The Bard of Avon", etc. are similar epithets which have frequently been used to describe both "Shaksper" and even Homer (author of "Illiad" and "Odyssey"), has been described as a ‘Bard’.

Yet, if we look to the actual definition of the word "Bard", we note readily that it is a word from Medieval Welsh. The actual meaning of the word "Bard" encompasses far more than merely being the author of a great text, or set of texts, which survive four, five, or twenty-five centuries. Bards were something altogether different from a mere playwright or author, actually. Much more like troubadours, perhaps. Singularly talented, and not merely limited to authorship, etc. Skilled in performance, battle, song, as well as writing.

I suggest that William Shakespeare is regarded as being the greatest English-speaking 'Bard-like author', largely because of his name, which connotes warrior-like characteristics, or acts (i.e. "shaking a spear"). Part of the tradition of the authentic Bards of Wales is that in addition to being poets, performers, singers, composers, scholars and genealogists for Royalty, they also were accomplished warriors who fought in many battles. So confident of his prowess in battle was Gwalchmai ap Meilyr (1130-1180), author of "Gorhoffedd" (i.e. "The Boast") that he actually wore gold jewelry (a torcque) into battle on behalf of his patron Owain Gwynedd (my 24th great-grandfather, by my calculations).

One might think that, as a Meyler, I would be more closely related to Gwalchmai, but he is actually only a 25th cousin 4 times removed. So, I speak with a degree of relative objectivity, here, being not merely partial to Welsh bards simply because of being related to several. In fact, the other best-known "Gorhoffedd" (a completely different poem) was written by Owain ap Hywel (907-987) who was actually my 29th great-grandfather, although I am much more fond of Gwalchmai's eloquent poem.

In any case, Thomas Rogers (1540-1611), was my 12th great-uncle, and lived 2 blocks away from William Shakespeare in Stratford. Thomas' grandson, was John Harvard, whose name is somewhat better recognized. I may not be related to Shakespeare, but I do deeply respect his incredible mastery of the English language, while, at the same time, being somewhat strict on the meaning of the word "Bard".

I hope I have been fair!

Clearly, William Shakespeare cannot be considered a Bard, unless, perhaps, the pen itself is somehow mightier than the sword. It turns out that not only did William Shakespeare NOT invent the sonnet, but that the sonnet form was actually invented by my 1st cousin 14x removed, Sir Henry Howard (1517-1547).

Semiotics and Nobel Peace

NICHOLAS MEYLER·SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2017·10 MINUTES

Semiotics and Nobel Peace: I was Six vs. “We Are Seven”

Having placed myself in the mildly challenging position of defending my claim (or interpretation, or theory, perhaps) that I won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of six, I thought it might be worth expounding upon that absurdity which I have previously termed (paraphrasing T.S. Eliot writing on John Milton or Edmund Spenser) an “[auditory] hypertrophy of the imagination” – pun intended. Simple inspection of the history of the Nobel tells us that only Sartre is openly acknowledged to have turned one down (in Literature), although some claim that George Bernard Shaw also declined it. Yet, there are some questions about the details of GBS’ refusal – the apparent truth being that he “accepted the honor,” but refused the money. Sartre, perhaps with greater integrity, refused the prize primarily because he wished not to set himself apart from the common man, eschewing distinctions in class and status as a reflection of the Socialist values he shared with Shaw. My own claim to have won the Prize in a clandestine fashion, in 1966, absurd as it must seem, has been bolstered by the recent actions of the Nobel committee; while they certainly haven’t been verbally expressive. According to the rules of the Nobel Trust, it is not allowed for the Nobel committee to release names of nominees for fifty years, and even then, only at their discretion.

My apparently outrageous contention is that I was awarded and then declined the Nobel Peace Prize in 1966, for contact with multiple alien intelligent beings; including many UFO landings in my backyard in Tarzana, California; and involving extensive faster-than-lightspeed travel (which Relativity Theory discloses to be equivalent to time-travel). In point of fact, I think it historically notable that my home (at 4608 Conchita Way, wherein I lived from 1965 to 1982) was purchased by the producer Stephen Deutsch, responsible for such time-travel epics as “Somewhere In Time” (starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour) and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. Stephen clearly shares my interest and fascination with Time Travel and Metaphysics, although I tend to be inclined towards the academic side of the field; and I suspect that he bought the house because we had advertised it in the L.A. Times as a “UFO Landing Site”. I don’t have any evidence of this, although it should be possible to obtain through examination of microfilmed copies of real estate ads from the L.A. Times and possibly other publications from 1982. If anyone can produce this evidence, it would be of great interest… and, if this exists only in my imagination (or “hypertrophy” thereof), at least it is a “grand illusion”.

Given that there is circumstantial evidence that I may have been involved in time-travel and faster-than-light travel events, I continue to investigate. George Bernard Shaw’s most popular play is “Pygmalian” (the basis for “My Fair Lady”), whose hero is a phonetician – and it is through phonetics that I have accumulated the largest body of evidence of my own personal possible experiences of time-travel, since my name is found phonetically encrypted in some classic musical compositions, centuries before my birth. Examples I have previously given are Mozart’s 14th and 41st Symphonies, Bach’s 4th Brandenburg Concerto (which also references “Hefner” – another odd character appearing anachronistically as a model in music composed in 1725), Stockhausen’s “Ceylon/Bird of Passage” album, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, and so on. That the “happy few” who have refused the Nobel Prize should be able to find ways to metaphysically help each other (despite large separations in the realm of Time), somehow has a fundamental justice to it, at least.

My theory has been, for more than a decade, that there was a NASA mission to Alpha Centauri in 1966. What the CIA files show as “Alpha-66”, however, is merely an Anti-Castro mission conducted by 66 Cuban emigres… no mention is made in those files of any extraterrestrial affairs. Still, the phrase “Anti-Castro” shares initials with “Alpha Centauri”, and one may draw one’s own inferences… Any faster-than-lightspeed mission might encounter the problem of entering a completely different Universe where that faster-than-lightspeed travel had never occurred. Thus, the mission could have been widely publicized at the time, but have become almost completely forgotten, due to the phenomenon of “Information Loss” (described by Hawking in a well-known 1972 paper).

The belief that a six-year old survived a rocket ride (almost certainly propelled by "dark matter" procured perhaps from the Magellanic Clouds in a “cyclic acausal” manner), in 1966, and achieved contact with aliens (in addition to the landings in the backyard in Tarzana), is obviously a huge leap of faith for anyone to make. Any healthy skeptic should remain a skeptic, without evidence that such an event happened, and it clearly isn’t spelled out in the CIA’s declassified files to “Alpha 66”. However, what is interesting, in the light of the recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mohammed Yunus, is that he is a 66-year old, awarded the Peace Prize in 2006. The trifold occurrence of the digit ‘6’ is interesting. Based on my many requests to the Nobel committee to provide information about my suspicion of having been secretly awarded the Peace Prize in 1966, is this a sign or signification that there is something correct in my assertions? Also, whether a 6-year old won and refused the prize in 1966, or a 66-year old won and accepted the prize in 2006, does the presence of the number '666’ itself make any difference? Is the name “Yunus” in any way a harking back to “Unicef” (the recipient of the 1965 Peace Prize)?

The subliminal lyrics to Pink Floyd’s 1972 album “Dark Side of the Moon” make clear references to me (via phonetic speech synthesis with electronic instruments), and to the Nobel committee. The subliminal lyrics of albums by The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, appear to make reference to me being “Lucifer” (associated both with the'666’ numerology as well as the defamed Catholic Saint (examples of such albums would be “Live Dead” [the song “Dark Star”] and “Dead Set” [“Samson and Delilah”, and “Fire on the Mountain”, etc.]). Since Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End’ describes the end of humanity (as we know it) resulting from the arrival of an extraterrestrial named "Karellan,” revealed (halfway through the novel) to possess the same physiognomy as the legendary Satan with wings, a tail, and horns, it might well behoove me to ignore the negative Christian mythology associated with the number '666’ just as the Nobel committee appears to have. Beethoven, oddly enough, refers to me as both “Jesus” and “Savior” in different symphonies, possibly because he must have heard Mozart’s 41st Symphony, where I am modeled with Jody Savin (I am speculating that “Savin” was perceived/interpreted as “Saven” by Beethoven, for instance). The subliminal lyrics of “Dark Star” by The Grateful Dead also make reference to me and Jody (actually a minor relationship in the scheme of my life), with an odd discussion about sticking a crucifix into a Black Hole (perhaps with the goal in mind of stabilizing an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, or wormhole to another universe)….

In 1966 and 1967, two years during which the Nobel Peace Prize was not officially awarded, a most lethal war was waged, in denial of our country’s inability to win that war, and Peace was only a distant dream. In harmony and resonance with my mercurial claim of winning the Nobel at the age of six, I offer Wordsworth’s poem “We Are Seven" which focuses on a child’s denial of reality, insisting that her dead siblings are still with her:

We Are Seven by William Wordsworth.

–A Simple Child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl: She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad: Her eyes were fair, and very fair; –Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?” “How many? Seven in all,” she said And wondering looked at me.

“And where are they? I pray you tell.” She answered, “Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the church-yard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the church-yard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother.”

“You say that two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven!–I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, how this may be.”

Then did the little Maid reply, “Seven boys and girls are we; Two of us in the church-yard lie, Beneath the church-yard tree.”

“You run about, my little Maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the church-yard laid, Then ye are only five.”

“Their graves are green, they may be seen,” The little Maid replied, “Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door, And they are side by side.

"My stockings there I often knit, My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit, And sing a song to them.

"And often after sunset, Sir, When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer, And eat my supper there.

"The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; And then she went away.

"So in the church-yard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I.

"And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side.”

“How many are you, then,” said I, “If they two are in heaven?” Quick was the little Maid’s reply, “O Master! we are seven.”

“But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!” 'Twas throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, “Nay, we are seven!”

Returning again to the topic of signification or semiotics and the Peace Prize; it clearly is unprecedented for the Nobel committee to award the prize (in consecutive years) to persons named “Mohammed”, and yet they have done so (to Mohamed El-Baradei and Muhammad Yunus). This seems to possibly express disenchantment with Christianity (and the mythology surrounding '666’), but it also is a gesture of offering an 'olive-branch’ to Islam, in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Parenthetically, Muhammad Yunus was also the recipient of the World Food Prize, which was initiated by my distant cousin (a second- or third-cousin) Norman Borlaug in 1986. I find it odd that the media paid so little attention to Yunus as a candidate, given that fact. For most, he was a “dark horse” candidate, possibly because the media is lazy, prefers to disinform, or simply wants to keep information to itself… There is no accounting for an information failure like this, and it reminds me of Einstein’s famous remark that “Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, and I’m not so sure about the former.”

There are many other points worthy of semiotic analysis in the history of the Nobel prize, but my intention is not to be exhaustive. Rather, I would like to provoke a little bit of thought, and to offer desperately needed (possible) explanations where there have previously been none. Everything, for instance, resolves to “How does a modern person’s name [mine] encrypt itself into art from the 18th century, associated with the Nobel Peace Prize, which also didn’t even exist at that time? And, what is the significance of this bizarre phenomenon?"

To those questions, I hope that I have at least offered a partial answer, although it might seem equally that I am "a miner for truth and delusion,” as the Pink Floyd lyric goes. Still, having barely ever heard of many past winners like Elihu Root, Fredrik Bajer, Frederic Passy, George Pire, etc., I suppose the Nobel Committee might have seen fit to try to award the prize to someone like myself, whose name somehow transcendentally appears (associated with the Nobel Peace Prize) in some very antique classics (while I am still largely unknown, of course). I wonder if that “auditory hypertrophy” of my imagination will ever be fully understood, recognized and explained.

–Nicholas Meyler, November 26, 2006

Exegesis of My Thoughts on Auditory Doppelgangers in Music

NICHOLAS MEYLER·FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2020·5 MINUTES

Apart from the instances I have previously pointed out in some detail (the passages in Grateful Dead's "Foolish Heart", Trent Reznor's "Closer", and Brandenburg Concerto #4 by J.S. Bach, Mozart’s 14th Symphony K#114 in A Major, etc.), one of the best examples of my auditory time-traveling doppelganger phenomenon I've ever heard is from Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Ceylon/Bird of Passage", which was composed when I was around 15. I'm pretty certain I didn't buy a copy until 1977 or 1978, at the earliest. I had never previously met Karlheinz Stockhausen, except on the UIA/CIA Mission with:

Felix Rodriguez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Rodr%C3%ADguez_(soldier) in 1968, when we brought Stockhausen here from his native planet orbiting the star Sirius, as Karlheinz repeatedly stated.

Stockhausen was very intuitive, very psychic, and studied about or with Indian yogi Sri Aurobindo. He writes about some of his psychic experiences and how his compositions were sometimes based on dream-flights into the Cosmic Oversoul.

In 1975, when this album first came out on Chrysalis Records, I was 15, and I shared an Attorney with the J. Paul Getty Museum Estate, since my paternal grandfather was that attorney's first-ever client. He later also counseled Howard Hughes to some extent. Getty's son Gordon is actually the world's richest composer, to my knowledge. He once gave my Mom a couple of cassettes of his music ("Plump Jack" and "The White Election").

at 5:41 I hear "Borlaug" (My 2nd cousin twice removed on my Mom's side -- a Nobel Peace Prizewinner Agriculturalist credited with inventing wheat strains which saved one billion lives from starvation)

at 10:30 I hear "Getty Deep" emulated electronically (suggestive of the extreme depths at which oil is found). Stockhausen, as a composer, was remarkable for his Capitalistic instinct, being one of the very first artists to purchase the rights to all his music from Deutsche Grammophon recordings.

at 14:15 I hear "Tara, Claudia, Laura... Nick is Nazi, Billionaire Nazi" (which is odd, since I am actually a Republican and not exactly a Billionaire... however, part of the "Doppelganger" idea is that the Double is an 'evil twin', which might actually make a certain amount of sense, then, being someone who would act counter to my best interests. Tara, Claudia and Laura were all girlfriends I hadn't had yet, when I was between the ages of 16 and 24 [accurately predicted by Stockhausen] in reverse order).

at 14:29 "Uma" is clearly spoken by the composer... interesting because "Uma" is from Tibetan Buddhism, and means "the Goddess". Uma Thurman's father is one of the world's leading authorities on Tibetan Buddhism, and named her after the Buddhist Goddess. She was also in a movie with Ben Affleck about an invention that could predict the future accurately, with a "Paycheck" hidden under the newspaper of the bird-cage (reference to "Bird of Passage"?) in the form of a winning lottery ticket.

at 15:30 I hear "Furnix" which could also easily be "Phoenix", "Fur Nichts", "Fur Nicks", etc. Repeatedly spoken throughout the piece is the name "Garuda", which is a winged Hindu deity, also somewhat evocative of the legendary Phoenix which re-emerges from the flames after its own Pyrrhic death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garuda

at 17:55 I hear another synthetic voice reference to birds (i.e. "We're ducky!")

at 19:19 "Getty, pow-wow-wow" seems pretty clearly enunciated, harking back to the Billionaire theme

at 21:00 "Waiter" or "Waaaiiiiitttteerrr!!!" seems to be shouted pretty loudly... not sure what that is about, but it does bring to mind "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" by Douglas Adams, published 5 years later, in 1980. Haven't quite figured that out, yet.

at 22:05 "How, how, how?, etc."

at 22:43 "You're a Leader" (I assume this is a direct but oneiric reference to me...or maybe that Borlaug dude, which is followed by a remarkably clever doubting sentiment at 23:45 to 23:55 "Why??" = "Wwwwwwhhhhhhhhyyyyyy????". Obviously, if someone claims me to be a leader, I want to know why! It does make a nice pun on "lieder" (German for 'song', in this speech-synthesis rich composition).

at 24:10 "Overall"

at 24:42 Composition Ends

“Bird of Passage” (i.e. “How Did We Get Here?”)

At 24:50, the album's second entry begins with the very complex and difficult to comprehend phrase (especially since it is almost steganographically encrypted, muffled and disguised as pure instrumental music, with percussion dominating): "Doppelganger Princeton Peace"

If it were up to me, I would have left out the "Princeton" part, since I was not terribly thrilled with their idea of "Academia" (which mostly seemed to be based on their adamant refusal to read books and actually do research, while insisting on mocking those that actually had done “the homework”); but, in any case (as in Mozart's 14th Symphony, where Princeton is referred to as "a bedwet", it is also equated with "Nobel Peace", for some reason [i.e. that is another example of the time-traveling Doppelganger I have been discussing in some detail]).

at 30:20 "Doppelganger Peace Prize Lives!" or "Doppelganger Peace Prizes"

In this composition, the disguised speech synthesis is much-better hidden, making it harder to provide clear-cut examples. However, at 35:53 "Better get dead!" is pretty clear. This is probably a duppel/doppel entendre, since The Grateful Dead are one of the very few bands which also openly advocate the importance of psychic powers in music. https://stanleykrippner.weebly.com/a-pilot-study-in-dream-t…

37:32 "Figaro's a lunatic!" (reference to Mozart's Nozze di Figaro and/or Rossini's "Barber of Seville"?)

42:50 "Better get dead" is reiterated...

43:29 "Figaro!"

46:33 After what sound like repeated iterations of "Democrat Winner" throughout this piece, the music quixotically ends with what sounds to me like "Reagan" -- a President who wasn't elected yet. Of course, this album was published during the Administration of Gerald R. Ford, before the election of Jimmy Carter, and hence, well before "Reagan".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHnGorNTT0

"Things I 'Figured Out' for Myself"

July 24, 2010 at 12:34 AM

from 2005? (approx.) "Things I Figured Out for Myself" I made this list because I sometimes do figure out these nifty ideas 'without help', and then read about them later in the news (as someone else's 'great new discovery'). So, I am working on this list, and will add to it as I recall more such events and instances. 1. Sharks with wings might be an evolutionary path on another planet. (It has been discovered that there were actually winged sharks in the seas of ancient Earth, but they went extinct many millions of years ago). I had a dream once, about being on a catamaran on the placid lagoon of a planet orbiting Tau Ceti ("Ceti" is actually Greek for "sea-monster", and not "whale", as many might presume), and awaking from the dream-experience (which felt like a memory) of being eaten alive by an enormous Great White Shark, with wing-like appendages similar to those of flying fish. Subsequent to my dream, I also learned that Great Whites are well-known for jumping out of the water to catch prey. 2. Epsilon Eridani has an inhabited planet (It has been discovered that there is at least one planet in orbit around Epsilon Eridani, which is probably uninhabited since much too large. However, there still might be smaller planets in orbit there, which are unseen). The SETI project observed a spike or signal from Epsilon Eridani on the first day of operation (if I recall correctly), but it was never repeated. Frank Drake supposedly concluded that this was only terrestrial interference which appeared to be from the direction of Epsilon Eridani, but I am suspicious of the whole SETI project, in principle. 3. Time-travel to the past must exist (Hasn't been confirmed yet, but light has been accelerated to 300x "c" in experiments). If information about the present day (approximately) somehow shows up in music composed in 1725 (e.g. Bach's Brandenburg Concerti), then someone must have put it there. 4. Global warming is real (pretty much confirmed recently). I based that judgment on the fact that California summers keep getting hotter... of course, many other people concurred on that one, so I clearly didn't invent it, but I was way ahead of the curve, and managed to get fired from a job as a chemist back in 1989, partly as a result of my opinions on the subject. 5. It makes lots of sense to assume that space is comprised of an infinite number of dimensions, of infinite size (infinite-dimension theory is getting popular these days, although 11-dimensional M theory leads the pack of theories). Common sense leads one to ask "What is so special about the number 11, anyway?" I can still remember pretty vividly being told that there were definitively 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, or 27 dimensions as well, at different times. Why would we be so gullible as to latch onto the idea that '11 dimensions' is the final and correct solution? 6. If "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce is a cyclical novel based on human history (it is), then it might be used to predict human history and events before they happen (example... the fall of the Soviet Union and Iran-contra [see pp. 518-519 of "Finnegans Wake"]). 7. Time-travel can be accompanied by information-loss phenomenon (thoughts influenced by Hawking's work, but pushing his 'envelope' somewhat). 8. Information isn't necessarily lost inside Black Holes, since particle pairs are created on the boundary... therefore the 'lost' information could remain accessible and encrypted somewhere (Hawking's information-loss paradox seems to deny this, and then he changed his mind somewhat, and there is also the work of t'Hooft on this subject). My idea that information is actually encrypted and not destroyed is just based on the fact that music contains encrypted information (sent at faster-than-light speeds) which is decodable. Encrypting information in music (or other art) might also be a means of compensating for 'information-loss', since the information could later be retrieved and reconstructed. 9. Since music contains decodable faster-than-lightspeed information, it ought to be useful in predicting future events (I've done a few 'experiments' of this nature, which seemed to work pretty well). Music can be a type of 'artificial intelligence' or intelligence amplification... this would also account for the 20-point IQ gain exhibited in experiments on the 'Mozart effect'. Einstein claimed to have had the inspiration for the Theory of Relativity while listening to Mozart -- this especially makes sense if Mozart's music contains information from the future which might have subliminally influenced Einstein. 10. Based on decoding messages in Mozart, Bach, Pink Floyd, Stockhausen, Frampton, etc., I determined the existence of an 'alternate Universe' or history which diverges from ours in approximately the year 1977. (Recent work by Hawking and Hertog implied that there clearly have been 'other universes' in history, which might be confirmed by examining cosmic background radiation levels -- some of this work is associated with NASA scientist John Mather, who won the Nobel for his efforts). Hawking and Hertog contend that their theory hasn't yet been confirmed, but I am inclined to say that I have already proved it, by using a fairly devious means. 11. There is a great black hole at the center of our galaxy, and it is much larger than previously thought (I was right on both counts, although I might have seriously overestimated the size of the black hole by a magnitude of 3 [digits]). 12. The Vulcans ("Star Trek") could really be based on witness-reports of aliens from Tau Ceti (some claim to have seen beings with pointed ears). "Star Trek" itself could be largely based on Top Secret UFO files, and CIA agents like James Jesus Angleton, Leonard McCoy, and Scotty Miler (among others). The CIA was actually founded two months after the Roswell event (or non-event) in 1947. 13. An extraterrestrial (or UFO/saucer/time-machine) crash at Roswell probably really happened. Among other things, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the Army to bury test-crash dummies in child-size coffins. 14. Prior to Seth Shostak making the proclamation that the SETI project was looking for messages from alien (i.e. ET) life-forms in "all the wrong places," I copyrighted my notes and thoughts on the subject (as "The Encryptment Thesis" in 1994), where I discuss the idea that truly advanced alien civilizations wouldn't send out signals to more primitive planets (like Earth), but would probably encrypt evidence of faster-than-lightspeed travel in 'places' which would have some degree of permanence. Encrypting coded messages (about the future) into great artworks like Bach's Brandeburg Concerti, Mozart Symphonies, etc., would allow a slow "coming to consciousness" for Humanity, that it already has had, and always will have had alien contact, but simply didn't understand it yet. 15. Based on my reading of philosopher/logician Saul Kripke's "Naming and Necessity", as well as my observations of encrypted or subliminal speech fragments in music, I speculated that sound itself may have properties which actually influence or predict events... This is a metaphysical concept which seems tangential to Kripke's thoughts on issues like 'rigid designation', and more along the lines of Russellian thinking. In any case, I think I was the first to try to apply it methodically, yielding successful predictions of severe disasters on multiple occassions. The goal of predicting disasters does make sense, since if they can be predicted, they may also potentially be averted. 16. The movie "Zoolander" is obviously based on Eric Lander of MIT's Whitehead Institute and his work on the human genome project, although the resemblances between Ben Stiller's character and Eric Lander are relatively small. 17. A convenient unit for measuring the rate of time-travel/interstellar travel for a fairly advanced culture would be "lyps" (i.e. "light-years per second"). Civilizations with 'time-suit' or 'lyps' technology would literally be able to travel to other stellar systems in seconds. Given that many of the existing clues about faster-than-lightspeed travel exist as synthetic speech encrypted in music (somewhat like song, but still 'unsung'), I think that the use of the term 'lyps' is sufficiently appropriate. This is my list so far... I will continue to work on it, and see where it leads me. Obviously, it's not that long, yet, but it's a start.

Questioning Biases About Doppelgangers

NICHOLAS MEYLER·MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2017·4 MINUTES

If we take a look at the history of people who have had noteworthy Doppelgangers -- who have at least written about them and sometimes had witnesses who corroborated their stories, the “Double-goers” or “Shadow-walkers” are frequently harbingers of bad omens.

I, however, have been aware of my auditory doppelganger for at least 40 years without any drastic ill-effects, and have actually found its existence to be intriguing and stimulative of a great deal of thought.

Relatively few "musical" or "auditory" doppelgangers have been reported. My analysis of this phenomenon is unique, as far as I know, and involves extremely sane, highly rational people who are among the brightest and most successful people in the World. One of the best-known examples of the idea of a Doppelganger in Art (in Fiction) is Oscar Wildes’ “Dorian Gray”. Wilde’s choice of the name “Dorian” is interesting because it is a musical modality, established in Ancient Greek times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_mode, as well as a word evocative of Gold (i.e. “D’Or”). In Wilde’s fantastic fiction, Dorian’s portrait ages and becomes ugly, while he remains the same. In Music, contradistinctively, nothing changes, and all is preserved for the inspection of posterity.

Hearing "Beethoven" subtly mentioned in a Mozart Symphony is an example. Hearing the name "Casiraghi" in Beethoven's "Geister Trio" would be another. Beethoven actually modeled himself in some compositions, where it sounds like he is composing syntheses of his own name... "Wittgenstein" appears to be mentioned in a Haydn symphony, although I can't recall precisely which one. Saul "Kripke" is clearly mentioned in Stockhausen's "Ylem"; Norman Borlaug is very clearly mentioned in "Ceylon" and "Kurzwellen" (before he won recognition for the Nobel Prize), and the "Nobel Prize" itself is mentioned in Mozart's 14th Symphony, a century before it existed.

There can be a degree of indeterminacy about identities modelled in Music (or Art, in general), but I often find portions of Stockhausen’s “Kurzwellen” to evoke some thoughts of Stephen Hawking. This was a composition from 1968, before Hawking was really famed, and it also has a peculiar phrase (i.e. “His wheelchair’s God”) which is odd since it happened to be composed before Hawking was even a Professor at Cambridge, and long before he announced himself as an Atheist.

I once told a friend from Princeton who also attended Saul Kripke's ‘Advanced Logic’ course, that I thought I heard his name mentioned in Beethoven's 8th Symphony, and wondered if he concurred. Within a decade, the "Beastie Boys" composed a tune called "Intergalactic Planetary", which is filled with obvious and clear speech-synthesis, including his name ("Brilliant Burtie" is how they put it), along with the mention of "Another Dimension, another dimension". Burt Totaro's research on higher dimensions in Algebraic Topology is something that appears to be very relevant to this kind of acoustical modeling: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0209173. Burt eventually went to work at Cambridge University, in Stephen Hawking’s Math Department, and now works at UCLA (a school founded by my great-great grandfather George Gephard).

Other acoustic/auditory doppelgangers exist for several of my Princeton classmates: Jody Savin (Director/Producer class of '82) is modeled with me in Mozart's 41st Symphony. Christopher Gocke (Cancer Pathologist class of '81) is mentioned in Beethoven's 3rd Symphony. "Hoookie" was a nickname for CIA Director/Secretary of Defence James Schlesinger's niece, "Kathryn" and appears in the Brandenburgs as well as the Salzburg Symphonies.

I have been aware of the existence of all these contemporary "acoustic models"/ Doppelgangers for many years, now, and all of them (except Borlaug, who died at the age of 93 or 94) are still alive. This clearly "breaks the mold" on the concept of Doppelgangerism being purely a harbinger of bad things.

My intent is to address the oddity of these observations and find logical ways to account for them. I think their causation might have something to do with my grandparents having been friendly with JFK's CIA Director, who was also the Secretary of the Army in 1948 (the year after the Roswell Crash). John McCone was a Secretary or President of the AEC, the Air Force, etc., and was involved in Project “Bluebook”, which I remember asking about when I was between the ages of 6 and 8.

I look for explanations based on acquisition and use of Alien Technologies, rather than Spiritual/Metaphysical issues, but the truth is that these might actually overlap.

SETI: Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

NICHOLAS MEYLER·FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2019·1 MINUTE

I find it puzzling that no one seems to care about the superluminally embedded speech-synthesis in Mozart's early Salzburg symphonies that clearly enunciate details of events that actually happened in the late 1970's, some hundreds of years after his birth.

Moreover, Karlheinz Stockhausen, who claimed to come from the star Sirius, includes plenty of cryptographic details about both me and my distant cousin, Norman Borlaug, who is credited with saving 1 billion lives. Plenty of prochronistic anachronistic cryptography is embedded in Ceylon/Bird of Passage (Chrysalis Records), for example (published in 1975, several years before I even knew who Stockhausen was, although 5 years after Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Nobel Prize).... The inference that I was the CIA UFO pilot that brought him here from Sirius is fairly obvious, in retrospect. Probably working in tandem with Iran-contra figure Felix Rodriguez.... ("Ear on Contra")

In any case, if the search for neutrinos was conducted in Salt mines, deep below the Earth, I think the search for ET should probably be conducted in Salzburg symphonies several hundred years old. The scholarship of Stockhausen merely amplifies the obvious facts. One thing I didn't like was Neil deGrasse Tyson trying to pass off Edward Snowden as the originator of my theory about Alien cryptography and signal transmission as his own.

Close Note

Notes on “Watergate”

NICHOLAS MEYLER·FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2017·6 MINUTES

Nixon was extremely interested in UFOs, and so was Haldeman. The conversation dealt partly with a UFO experience/sighting that I had had, personally. My family was also friendly with JFK's CIA Director John McCone, who I definitely met, and who had indicated to me that the Democratic Party (including LBJ) were behind the JFK assassination. Thus, it would have been completely natural for me to be in sympathy with the just-reported break-in at the DNC, and expressing my support (misguided or not). My family has been friendly (over decades) with several different Presidents' closest friends and advisors.

Because of my concern, at the time, that McGovern was fomenting a potential assassination, I actually advised several people that I thought that it would be reasonable to bug the DNC, and listen in on conversations for any possible clues about assassination plots. One of these was Otis Chandler, I believe, who encouraged my effort at protecting the Presidency, despite his being an ardent "JFK Democrat". Chandler was the former owner of the LA Times, and quite well-known. Obviously, if my family was acquainted with the Chandlers, it wouldn't have been very far-fetched to contend that I could have been placed in verbal contact with Bob Woodward.

No one else, that I know of, has been able to explain exactly why Watergate even happened, let alone how they know why it happened, so I suspect that my claim might well "trump" Mark Felt's claim to be a key informant. One key doubt about Mark Felt is that he couldn't possibly have had any knowledge of the 18.5 minutes of tape, nor what it was about, since he wasn't a "Whitehouse insider".

Also, it has been pointed out that Woodward couldn't have been correct to assert (as he claims) that he communicated with "Deep Throat" by placing a flowerpot on his balcony. Adrian Havill's research proved that no flowerpot could have been seen from the street... also, Havill pointed out that "Deep Throat" couldn't have communicated with Woodward by drawing clocks on the newspaper (as claimed in "All the President's Men"), since the papers were delivered in a stack in the lobby, and not personally, so Woodward couldn't have known which paper to pick.

The tape could well have been erased to protect the identity of a minor (I was 12, at the time), and also because UFOs are considered a matter of highest secrecy and national security.

I should also point out that my name "Nick Meyler" makes a fairly obvious pun ("Neck Miler") on Deep Throat... It also makes a pun on "Iran contra" (Miler/Nicaragua), and I do feel I should point out that I actually invented the Iran-contra plot (as I claim in my 2004 and 2005 Marquis' Who's Who Entry).

In fact, I invented Iran-contra, based on p. 518 of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", partly out of a sense of moral outrage at people like Woodward, who had exploited me as a minor, and contributed to my delinquency, by giving me an eponym (i.e. "Deep Throat") which is highly sexual, and obscene. Also, I saw an opportunity to help protect the United States from Communism, and to help hostages held in Iran. Note that Ollie North, much better known for his role in Iran-contra than I, has never claimed to have invented the concept. If anything, he said he received the idea from Ghorbanifar (which I of course dispute, since I had sent in a 4-page letter to President Reagan in 1983 or 1984, outlining my reasoning for this covert action -- since my grandparents were friendly with some of Reagan's key supporters, I was listened to, when others might not have been).

Not only this, but the term "Deep Throat" as I understand it, refers to a phenomenon of speech-synthesis (synthetic voice [or "throat"] by musical instruments (also discussed in my Who's Who entry, and in my entry in the 1993 Cambridge International Biographical Society's "Men of Achievement"). I am the subject of a considerable amount of musical art "modeling", and, for example am modeled in the subliminal lyrics of the album "Dark Side of the Moon" (very popular at the time), and numerous other pieces of music.

The fact that I was only 12 to 14 at the time is irrelevant, since I have an IQ which has been reported/estimated at 215 (and I did actually score a 195 on one test, though it might not have been my best performance), certainly high enough to be significantly intellectual at an early age.

"Deep Throat" was probably more than one person, but certainly not mostly Mark Felt. I feel that my claim to be that more or less fictional identity (and certainly not a name of my own choosing, at least as I recall) is sounder, more reasonable, and more accurate than what Woodward and Bernstein are claiming.

Because I was intuitively aware that Bob Woodward was probably a liar, even as a 14 year old, I called upon some of my acquaintances to help me recollect events carefully. As a chessplayer, I was in tournaments ("All the President's Men is also an allusion to "All the King's Men", obviously), and had met people like James Tarjan, who was a US Champion. Tarjan's brother is a world-leading authority on Artificial Intelligence and Computers, and it is well-known that the most famous computer chess programs are named after "Deep Throat" (i.e. "Deep Thought" and "Deep Blue"). I definitely believe that I can remember James Tarjan telling me not to trust Woodward to eventually tell the truth, and that the scheme of overcoming his deception could be accomplished by long-range planning (which chessplayers naturally have a greater faculty for). So, this justifies the naming of the computer programs, and serves the ulterior purpose of outwitting Woodward. Parenthetically, dull chessplayers are sometimes referred to as "woodpushers". I suspect I am a mere "woodpusher" (currently only rated 2040) to James Tarjan, but I am convinced that I have accomplished a goal of long-range planning, to defeat disinformation by the American media.

For those (and other) reasons, I think that the "divulgence" of Mark Felt as "Deep Throat" is a fraud by Woodward and Bernstein. It certainly would make sense, however, that a journalist would like to keep hidden the fact that he dubbed a 14-year old "Deep Throat". I have claimed to be "Deep Throat" before, as early as 2003, in an article I published on "Useless Knowledge.com" To my thinking, Woodward and Bernstein's conduct violates my intellectual property rights, and my right to publicity on this controversial matter.

There are other instance of Woodward blatantly lying, too. For instance, he claimed to have interviewed CIA Director William Casey after brain surgery (Casey couldn't even speak at the time). Casey's widow was quite offended with his lies, I recall. And, after all, when Felt "came out" as "Deep Throat", Woodward and Bernstein both initially denied it -- and then changed their stories within 24 hours.

So, clearly, doubting their account of events is extremely reasonable. My feeling is that I have "force majeur" in demonstrating who more closely resembles that obscene moniker.

I believe (if my memory is accurate) that I was introduced to Nixon telephonically by Robert Haldeman, whose family had been friendly with mine since at least 1963. That would have been the 18.5 minutes of tape that was later erased (i.e. referred to as "Tape 342"). In fact, my phone number at the time was 342-2445, in Tarzana, CA.

On the Utility of Music as Cryptocurrency

NICHOLAS MEYLER·SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2017·3 MINUTES

On the Micronesian Island of Yap, in olden times, money consisted of large stones carved into several-foot diameter circular shapes with central holes of several inches in diameter.

There was no actual use (or “utility”) for these stones, but they could only be made by taking long and dangerous sea-voyages to islands hundreds of miles away, where the the limestone could be quarried, and then transported back (via outrigger canoe) at an even higher and more perilous risk... The value of this currency was therefore based only on its rarity and the inherent difficulty of its acquisition.

One might also infer, from the roundness of these carved and polished stones, that they could be rolled for spatial intervals, to be transported. This, my Readers, was the invention of “Rock and Roll”.

I suggest that there is much greater usefulness to mere sound-waves (i.e. as “Music”) which seems to justify an even higher value than the old Yap stones (at the very least). I postulate the following:

Time=Money

Information=Money

Intelligence=Money

Therefore, Superluminally-embedded Information which allows alteration of Future History should also be "Money".

Sound has been demonstrated to be able to travel faster than lightspeed (i.e. "superluminally"), because Phonons (quanta of sound/vibration) are massless and therefore not restricted to the Einstein limit of velocity (c= speed of light).

Music itself is the original cryptocurrency. It brings joy to the listener, or a plenitude of other emotions, and subliminally imparts information about 5-Dimensional Hilbert Spaces. In my opinion, that is why People can score 20-points higher on IQ tests while listening to Mozart (i.e. "The Mozart Effect"), because so much of his music is based on time-travel and alternate Universes (Alternate Histories). Einstein himself admitted that most of his inspiration for Relativity came from listening to Mozart, and as an accomplished violinist with a very keen ear, his statement cannot be discounted as mere metaphor.

The primary effect of listening to Mozart is enhanced "Spatial Reasoning" skills, which is quite reasonable if we consider that Mozart's music (especially) contains some of the clearest examples of speech-synthesis and superluminal information content, as well as clear-cut discussions of Alternate World-histories, etc. Ingmar Bergman also agreed with me about this (“Bach and Beethoven show us other worlds”). https://www.facebook.com/notes/nicholas-meyler/ingmar-bergman-on-possible-worlds-beethoven-and-bach/125256810845569/

In any case, one of the reasons Apollo was the Greek God of Music, Prophecy and Reason (in my opinion) is that Music permits Superluminal Information Transmission and thereby enables great Reasoning skills, based on better Information.

The old adage about music being worthless (i.e. "It's worth a song", meaning valueless) is questionable. Rather, Music is perhaps a cryptocurrency of greater value than mere "money" itself.

The idea behind Bitcoin was that digital information has inherent value. This has proven, at least empirically, at least so far, to be true, where Bitcoin has commanded prices up to $15,000 per unit.

There is also a utility to Music, based on psychoacoustical phenomena, which is unique. For instance, acoustical perception of the note A (440 Hz) actually stimulates nerves in the brain to vibrate at exactly 440 Hz ["This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levitin: http://daniellevitin.com/…/boo…/this-is-your-brain-on-music/]

No other type of perception of Art forms does this. So, Music, which is clearly an Art, has a unique value unto itself. We also know that Art has value, from recent events like a fairly unknown painting by Da Vinci selling for $450 million.

So, I suggest that we need to re-think our attitudes about Music, and reconsider it to be a medium of communication and commerce which deserves greater attention.

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vanilla-blessing · 6 years

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Anime Mobile Game Reviews - Yuki Yuna is a Hero: Flower Braid's Sparkle

For some of the 12 Days of Anime Christmas feature on Vanilla♡Blessing, I’ve taken it upon myself to review the magical girl mobile games I wasted actual real hours of my human life playing using a GameFAQs scoring system. - qb

Yuki Yuna wa Yusha de Aru: Han Yui no Kirameki (Yuki Yuna is a Hero: Flower Braid's Sparkle) is a Japanese mobile game released on iOS and Android to promote the new season of Yuki Yuna, a magical girl anime where the girls have severe disabilities and cry a lot. The eponymous heroes fight monsters called the Vertex to protect the great God Tree and Togo is the one with a worryingly nationalist streak and Yuna is the pink one that punches and they’re girlfriends maybe. It’s basically Glitter Force (PreCure) with more crying and depression.

[Yuki Yuna Muscle Wizard art from the mobile game]

“The mobile game takes place inside the godtree, where the Yuushas are tasked with suppressing the rebelling heavenly gods that are inside the godtree (trapped, I guess?) so they don't break out because if they do the godtree will collapse from lack of divine power and take what's left of the human reality with it. Since they're inside the godtree's world, time is meaningless hence why there's yuushas from all eras.” (source)

This is apparently the backstory but I didn't get any of this while playing it because I can't read Japanese. I think they went to the beach once. The story scenes were mandatory and very long and used the Live-2D arm-wavy and mouth flapping tech that actually looks surprisingly fine for how non-intensive it is. It’s pretty much Yuki Yuna Allstars with multiple copies of characters, although it’s slightly confusing that some of the girls are able to walk in cutscenes when their sprites need mechanical assistance. There’s an absolutely massive amount of motion comic story there, with more on the way, but it seems to be mostly pointless fanservice. It also seems to take place after the events of the unaired second season, which further cements its intended audience as the very hardcore fans.

Lore - 6/10

The gameplay can be described as a line-based defense, where you order teams of auto-attacking magical girls to block waves of enemies that flood in from the left side of the screen, and prevent them from reaching the right side of the screen, sometimes ending on a larger enemy as a boss. Through defeating enemies, you can build up meter to spend on special AOE attacks that you slide to activate, typically clearing many enemies at once. Each stage has three missions that can be cleared for additional rewards, and usually require finishing under a strict time limit instead of the normal one, or finishing a stage without having any magical girls knocked out. Like most of these games, Yuki Yuna has a support system where you can hire another player’s magical girl to round out your team.

[Eventually, most of your teams will end up looking like this.]

Unfortunately, due to a combination of design quirks, the higher difficulty stages have time limits that are stricter than the spawn rate of the enemies, making them literally impossible without abuse of the Critical system. In Yuki Yuna, Criticals happen randomly based on your heroes’ CRIT attribute, and in addition to bonus damage, they add two seconds to your decreasing timer for each hit. This means that many of the game’s systems for rock-paper-scissors elemental affinity, or ranged vs melee, or even higher rarity heroes, take a backseat to cramming as many critical hits into your team as humanly possible in order to survive the time limit, rather than the monsters, who you actually want to stay alive for longer. Since only one magical girl in the entire game has a fast attack speed, ranged projectiles, and a good CRIT stat, your team eventually ends up being 3 copies of her. I don’t even know what her name is. Regardless, the gameplay is honestly pretty fun, and can get to blisteringly fast speeds which cuts down significantly on grinding time.

Mechanics - 8/10

Yuki Yuna was very generous with energy, stocking me up with endless energy refreshing items that I never came close to running out of since level up bonuses stacked, resulting in full refills that went well over the maximum amount, even into later levels. I probably could never get through all of the free energy the game throws at you unless I was playing 24 hours a day. The difficulty system of the game was interesting, but was ultimately made difficult by strange design quirks more than higher monster stats, and was sometimes frustrating to play around. Daily Quests were a choke point, with limited time windows in which to complete them on top of separate, limited resources for entry. These extremely limited quests were also the only consistent source of upgrade materials. Leveling materials (always bags of udon) were plentiful, but the upper limit on the highest rarity heroes seemed to go on forever and require infinite amounts of udon. I only saw a couple players that were willing to attempt to grind the tedious and impractical process of maxing out the levels, and I never saw anyone actually get to max level in my entire time with the game. However, the early stages were quick and I never felt like I had to wait to do anything.

Progression - 7/10

[I think these quests were asking me to complete unreleased content, I never figured it out]

Earning new heroes is done through a gacha system that was very generous at the start of the game’s life, with multiple concurrent login bonuses and plenty of one-time premium currency rewards. I was also able, as a free player, to get all the highest rarity cards I wanted with almost no effort. Considering how terrible the game’s paid rates were, it never felt like I was even expected to spend real money. As the game went on, the persistent quests become increasingly impossible and inscrutable, and a majority of the possible progress I could make towards pulling new magical girls ended up coming down to the login bonus rather than anything I could earn through gameplay. However, I never felt any pressure whatsoever to go beyond free-to-play.

Microtransactions - 9/10

By the law of GameFAQs’ perfect review system, Yuki Yuna wa Yusha de Aru: Han Yui no Kirameki (Yuki Yuna is a Hero: Flower Braid's Sparkle) gets a 40/50. It was an odd, fast-paced action game that had some good aspects, but eventually got bogged down in weird design mechanics and I fell off it after it became nearly impossible to progress. Overall though, I had fun, and it was completely free. The other mobile games i’m planning to review were not nearly as nice.

- qb magical girl correspondent

#yuki yuna #Yuki Yuna wa Yusha de Aru: Han Yui no Kirameki #Yuki Yuna is a Hero: Flower Braid's Sparkle #mobile games

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dragon-moms · 7 years

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Entry 116 - Baroness

Conquest continues. Slowly.

I am still waiting.

But today, I could not continue hiding. It had been too long without news. So once again, under the cover of near-night, I flew to Clementine’s.

After a knock, Clementine answered the door. The sight of me clearly frightened him for a moment, and he put a claw to his chest to catch his breath. “Don’t do that…” he said.

“I am unsure what I have done wrong,” I said.

“You… nothing, I guess… besides coming over. You are so lucky Pike had some thing with his parents tonight.”

“...I am sorry. I am simply concerned that…”

“Just... come in,” Clementine said, giving me plenty of room.

Thankful for the space he was giving me, I once again entered his dining chamber.

“Do you want anything? A drink or something?” Clementine asked.

“I do not eat or drink,” I said.

“...okay then,” he said.

“I do need an additional favor,” I said.

Clementine gave me some sort of look.

“I would like information on the situation most of all. But since you have not contacted me, and thus likely have no new information of consequence, I understand if you cannot help in this area. However, I also am in need of assistance.” I started pulling supplies out of my bag. “Since my claw covers have been destroyed, I have been attempting to replicate them. However, I find myself incapable of the precision needed to sew the complex ritual lines into the leather. Myrmidon normally undertook such tasks. I recall from Merry’s diaries that you are at least somewhat skilled at these sorts of projects.”

Clementine looked down to the leather and things, and then back to me.

“I have been attempting to figure out what I should be preparing for to assist my children, Merry, and Gloria, and reducing the chances of killing Merry and Gloria has always proven a positive factor in any prospective endeavors I might predict engaging in. Thus, I cannot wait for Myrmidon to assist me.”

“A positive factor,” Clementine said.

“Yes.”

“I was too terrified the first time and too busy making sure I didn’t get caught the time after that, but are you okay?” Clementine asked. “You’re approaching this situation in a way that says ‘I am having a complete emotional breakdown and can’t process what I’m feeling, so I’ll work on something else.’”

Now I stared at him for a moment, looking for words. “...I am fine,” I said.

“Sure you are,” he said, sighing. He went over to the supplies, and I backed off a bit more for safety. “This design?” he said.

I nodded.

“It is complicated… I’d probably normally ask Merry for help with something this fine, honestly. But I can try if you want.”

“Your effort would be appreciated,” I said.

“And while I do that,” he said, “you are going to do a few things for me.” He walked over to some letters on a table and picked one up. “First, you’re going to read this letter your kid sent you. That one really isn’t a favor for me, but it saves me the trip I was going to make to see you tomorrow.”

“My child sent me a letter?” I said, confused, looking at the envelope. “I assumed that Myrmidon would not be able to write, given their current imprisonment.”

“It’s from Dagger,” Clementine said.

I found myself in doubt this was true. I needed to read that letter. “I see.”

“Second, you have to stay far away from the Egg. Third, we have to figure something out so you’re not just showing up over here. I understand you can’t just wait for me, but if Pike were here, it would have been… very bad,” he said. “You’re a wizard, right? Figure something magic out that we can use in secret.”

I thought for a moment. “Do you have spare parchment and something to write with?”

“Sure,” Clementine said.

“It will be trivial to create a small message system using a variation on the classic Linked Letter,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if it works, great,” he said. “I also need you to do one more thing for me. Once you’ve read your letter, and did your magic thing, you’re going to spend the rest of the time sewing telling me about how you’re feeling about all this. No ‘I’m fines’” he said, gathering parchment and writing tools for me, and placing them on a table with the letter.

I searched for words. “...I am… unsure if I will be able to…”

“It couldn’t be easier. There’s no wrong answer,” he said, sitting down. “And if you don’t do it, I won’t sew your thing.”

“...why.”

“Because I can’t help my friend and I can’t help my Mom, but you’re here, and I can help you,” he said. “I am going to do something to help. Okay?”

“...I agree to your terms.”

“Thank you,” Clementine said, and picked up my diagrams to study them.

I picked up the letter. It was addressed to Clementine, so he had already checked it. But inside was left a piece of parchment for me.

“Mom,

Gloria told me to write you a letter. So I’ve written you a letter.

And now she won’t let me just write that and be done with it. So I guess I’ll be honest.

At first I thought coming to The Peak wasn’t so bad. It was something different, anyway. But I miss our place already. I miss my pointless excuse for a job. And I guess I miss you, a little. I want to go back to Orin, and have my garbage routine back.

I’m trying hard to make that happen. You better be too.

Dagger.”

I folded the letter and returned it to the envelope.

I then set about drawing a simple set of Linked Letter lines on two pieces of parchment. I quickly activated them, and put one in my bag.

“What’s it do?” Clementine asked, cutting leather for my covers.

“I will write a message concerning my arrival on my parchment, and it will appear on yours,” I said. “It is not a technique often used because it takes a great deal of energy to make permanent, especially over long distances, and because it has an upper limit to messages sent. But this should hold and suffice until next we meet without issue.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll check it when I get home from the office. Try to tell me you’re coming as early as possible.”

“Yes…” I said.

There was silence as he began to sew. But soon, he spoke a single word. “So.”

“...yes?”

He just looked at me.

“...I… am unsure what to…”

“How are you?” he asked.

“I am…” But I had told him I would not use that phrase. “I am… thinking about my child…”

“Dagger?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What about Dagger?” he asked, the needle starting to move again.

“Eir letter said ey are wanting to return here…”

When he realized I wasn’t going to continue, he stopped working and looked at me again.

“I am… glad ey want to come back to this life, but I do not know if it will be possible,” I said.

Clementine nodded and started sewing again.

“Since I have reconstructed eir soul it has been a constant worry that ey were unhappy. It is reassuring I have stumbled upon something that made em at least somewhat satisfied. I worry I will not be able to recreate it. I know that Myrmidon is similarly attached. I find myself similarly worried about my creation’s happiness. In theory much of their happiness can be easily transferred, however.”

“That so?’ Clementine asked.

His responding to my speaking made me doubt my words. “I… believe so… Merry would not be difficult to transport…”

“She might not want to go,” Clementine said.

“She is… similarly burdened by this situation, as is my apprentice. We will all go together.”

“I don’t want her to go, I meant,” Clementine said. “I’d miss her.”

“I… am sorry…” I said, unsure how to respond to that.

“It’s fine. I’m trying not to think about that myself,” he said. “But do go on.”

“Go on…?”

“How do you feel about this? About moving on?” he asked. “You’ve told me all about your kids, what about you?”

“I… will move, if necessary. I have done it many times before,” I said. “But I am somewhat attached to the place I currently reside. It is a foolish notion. I can rebuild similar facilities in other locations, with enough time. And I have plenty of time.”

“Guess so,” Clementine said. “Surely there can’t be a good reason.”

There was silence as he sewed. I felt the need to fill it, as requested. But I did not know with what.

“I…” I started.

Clementine looked over at me.

“I have had a family here, and friends,” I said softly. “I never had those, even when I was alive. There is more to replace than facilities, but I do not think I can replace them as easily as my reference texts or other supplies. So I do not wish to go.”

“There it is,” Clementine said.

“There what is?” I asked.

“What you wanted to say,” he said. “What you’re scared of, outside of your kids.”

“It is additionally illogical,” I said. “I will outlast your mother, Merry, Philly. I will exist long after they are dead. I will have to lose them eventually. Much like my apprentice, I do not think they will consent to me resurrecting them. Now or 500 years from now. It is a trivial amount of time.”

“I doubt you believe that,” he said. “You’re trying to convince yourself.”

“...yes.”

“I don’t know what’s up with your whole… being a skeleton thing, but time with those you care about is important, even if it’s not enough,” Clementine said. “You’re not foolish for feeling that way.”

“...you speak like my apprentice,” I said.

“I do?”

“She is my advisor on emotional matters.”

Clementine chuckled. “Ah, okay. But this is just the kind of thing friends talk about, you know.”

“It is?”

“Yeah.”

I thought about this. “...you consider me a friend.”

“What was it that you said?” Clementine said. “People I care about trust you, so I’m also going to trust you. And maybe we’ll be better friends in the future, you never know.”

“...thank you,” I said.

“Sure.” Clementine set down the claw covers. “I’m going to walk over here, you tell me if I did an okay job.”

I carefully moved to where he was working and examined the ritual lines. They looked acceptable. I activated them, and slid the covers on. I could feel them inhibiting my aura. I must admit it was somewhat a relief. I had not realized how much I depended on feeling it to know I was not endangering others.

“They seem to be functioning properly. Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome, but you’ll excuse me if I don’t volunteer to test them,” he said.

“I understand.”

We chatted a little more, and I soon left, feeling a bit lighter, though only slightly more prepared for what might come.

#dragons #moms #dragonmoms

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piratefalls · 7 years

Text

Long Fic

Fealty by astolat

"The only promise I will make you is that having found you, I will go to almost any lengths you care to name to keep you."

Point of a Pistol by Giddygeek

Root returns to claim what's hers.

i’ll pretend my heart’s not on fire if you steal my true love’s name by queenklu

“You know I can smell it on you,” Detective Carter says after her speech about helping hands and self-punishment. “You’re an Alpha.”

Outsider Perspective by Neery

John and Harold lose their memories.

An Unstoppable Force by giandujakiss, interation

John is still trying to figure out this little mouse of a woman who’s hired him, who can do anything with computers and has more money than God and who can barely walk and yet somehow always manages to evade him, who won’t tell him anything about herself but who says she knows everything about him – and he knows that can’t be true, it can’t –

When he realizes, she’s actually attracted to him. (always-a-woman!Finch)

It’s a Dog’s Life by manic_intent

Six months, no yellow cape, and one and a half thankfully harmless gun accidents after, Harold and Nathan had settled into a routine. The Machine would send them a number, and Harold would try his damnedest to resolve it through a computer. Usually, this endeavour would end in failure, because despite the advent of technology, the idiocy of certain members of humanity was so fundamental that not even computers could provide any sort of real solution.

This meant that Nathan often had to intervene. Sometimes they hired help: which had worked out with varying degrees of disaster. Sometimes they tipped off the police. Sometimes Nathan and Harold ventured out, bickering all the time, and the success rate of this latter tactic was usually at around 24%. It also usually served to further erode Harold’s already falling opinion of humanity.

A Really Private Person by astolat

The end of the world started on a Wednesday in March.

less bigger than the least begin by queenklu

“Mr. Gully is my former employee,” says Finch, fingers splayed over another stack of printouts, Gully’s blank-smiling face lurking in the upper left corner.

“Oh.” John waits, but Harold doesn’t add anything, doesn’t move except where his fingertips are twitching against the paper. "Forgive me for saying so, Harold, but that seems like the kind of information you’d lead with.”

A Slight Miscalculation by skepwith

Reese is an incubus that Finch summons by mistake.

The wizard isn’t at all what John expected. He’s slight, with a beakish nose, pale eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, and receding hair that stands up straight like it’s surprised. In his brown three-piece suit, he looks like a teacher at an old-fashioned boys’ school. But it isn’t his nebbishy appearance that throws John—it’s his expression. Most summoners greet him with a leer or a blush; this man looks, well, baffled.

The Raven Project by iteration

Reese tries to tail Finch over and over but never sees his home. Eventually, his imagination starts to run away with him.

Technical Support by astolat

The IFT Plaza security team wasn't what John would have called the brightest stars in the firmament.

All the things we don’t talk about by iteration

Finch moved his hand, and asked Reese to follow it with his eyes. He made a tiny clucking noise. Which was absurd because Finch appeared to be just as addled and confounded as Reese. "Mr. Reese, you're not well… You should get some rest."

Motivations by JenNova

John never wears gloves. Finch bought John an apartment full of windows. And why.

Dangerous If Unbound by astolat

The Texas sun beating down was merciless, almost a physical weight on his shoulders. John couldn't move even to change the angle: the collar was tight, the cuffs were tight, and the chains had been pulled to their limits.

A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement by Toft

Harold and John begin a casual sex arrangement. It doesn't go particularly well.

Belonging by nogoaway

The engraving is a thin cursive font; elegant, but not pompous or flowery. Even in the light it's small, and John has to squint to see. It reads: Belonging to Harold R. Wren.

John feels his mouth quirk up. 'Belonging to'. Not 'Property of'. It was the kind of distinction that Harold was always concerned with. Of course he'd have something engraved custom rather than put his name, even a false one, to a statement he didn't believe. Bear wasn't anyone's property. But he belonged somewhere. He belonged to someone.

Hamartia (the hero’s fatal flaw) by astolat

"We're not looking to make friends, Harold," John said. "We want our neighbors to classify us and then avoid us. Being the scandalous gay couple down the street is a good option."

Short Fic

The Silenus Club by Speranza

"I won't insult you by explaining the nature of the club," Harold said in a low voice.

Date Night by Spatz

“Mr. Reese, what is that sound?”

“I’m making popcorn,” John said, like it was obvious.

Kept Man by esteefee

John knows what Finch is doing; does he?

why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute by leupagus

“It’s perfectly logical. We’re bound to be caught at some point together, and as far as I can see there’s no downside to connecting Mr. Warren to Mr. Wren socially. We’ll have an easier time explaining ourselves being together if we’re observed being together, and since you’ve vetoed all of my suggestions for activities that you could take up—“

“I’m not joining a bowling league, Harold,” John says firmly.

A More Subtle Trap by Giddygeek

There is a danger here, although it isn't John himself--it's what John's closeness makes Harold want.

Ring by Speranza

A phone rang. Finch stilled, head tilted, listening. The pay phone was housed on top of a low grey metal stand in front of the corner deli. Instinctively, Reese glanced up and saw the red glowing eye of the camera. Finch had already started for the phone, but Reese put a hand on his shoulder.

"It's for me," Reese said.

What’s On the Table by cortue

Harold is fairly certain this is a fruitless endeavor, but he finds he can’t forget the question now that he’s asked it of himself. What does John actually enjoy?

Catch a Boat to England, Baby (Maybe to Spain) by leupagus

The car door opens and one of the soldiers slides in, almost braining Harold with the butt of his gun. "Sorry, sir," the soldier says, breathless, "I thought you were in the other car — but you weren't — so I had to jump out and—"

"Who are you?" Harold says, but the soldier's familiar; the tall one who'd looked embarrassed.

And who still looks embarrassed. "Oh. Sorry, sir. Um. John Harris. Private Harris? I'm your um, assigned unit. Sir.” He sticks out a hand.

Losing Control by Neery

"It's got to be some messed-up new designer drug," Carter said.

Love And Marriage by astolat

"Harold," John said, "are you asking me to marry you for your money?"

"Well, Mr. Reese," Harold said, "given how much of it you've spent already, I don't really see how you can complain."

Absolutely Necessary and Altogether Impossible by esteefee

Reese braked suddenly. "Stay in the car," he said, and then slid out and pounded away into Washington Square Park, and there wasn't even a Number—they were just enjoying an evening drive after the concert.

Circle Completing the Square by jjtaylor

There’s nothing wrong with needing to be told what to do.

Press My Nose to the Glass Around Your Heart by Perpetual Motion

He states rather than asks because time has shown that stating garners better results.

Layover by nogoaway

"I said no such thing. Only that it would be unethical, not to mention unwise, to sleep with an employee."

Escapism by astolat

The surprise was, this time he didn't open his eyes in a hotel room in Mexico.

Trophy Husband by killalla

Never underestimate the allure of the game. And never fight a land war in Asia.

let’s be clear, i’ll trust no one by violentdaylight

“You’re not expendable,” Mr. Finch had said, standing too close to him, and even though John had the advantage of height over him, John’s knees were nearly buckling at the unyielding expression on his face, those clear blue eyes staring him down.

Echoes by eris

If it were predictable, they wouldn't call it shock.

pretense never suited us by the_ragnarok

A drug that removes inhibitions has an unexpected effect on John.

The Third Time by drifterskip

It takes time and stressful circumstances for Finch and Reese to comprehend just how much they could mean to each other. Feelings are dangerous. Then again, nearly everything they do is dangerous.

When he was forced to do so, Finch didn’t just break people, the way Reese did. No, Finch destroyed them, if need be. To protect the things in this life that Finch held dear, he could and would stop at nothing.

you knew who I was with every step that I ran to you by violentdaylight

"Hmmh, blow jobs, Harold,“ John says, as if Harold is being especially dense. "You know. Giving head, sucking someone off.“ He considers for a moment. "Oral sex.“

"I understand what a blow job is, Mr. Reese,“ Harold says with a desperate edge to his voice. "Please go to sleep.“

In which John has trouble expressing how he feels. Harold can relate.

PWP

Are you ready (for what I’m about to do to you?) by iteration

"Will you ever tell me your real name, Harold?"

"You know several of my real names, John."

For Tomorrow by astolat

Harold said, softly, without looking at him, "I told you once we'd most likely end up dead." (post 2x10)

Triceps Brachii by judgebunnie

It was getting to be a problem.

High Risk by Toft

“I’ll be indisposed for a day or two, Mr Reese,” Finch says. He sounds strained, embarrassed. “If a number comes through, I have every confidence that you will manage it. I’d be grateful if you didn’t try to contact me.”

Gift of the Magi by astolat

She said, "You're not ignoring it on purpose, are you? You don't even know

need not by the_ragnarok

Harold spite-masturbates. John catches him with his pants down.

Self Defense by Speranza

There were heavy velvet curtains over the windows.

Prudent Is the New Sexy by LadyDrace

Having to work around chronic injuries doesn't mean that sex has to be difficult.

a brief history of pain relief by violentdaylight

"I hope you're not planning on letting Detective Riley develop a drug habit," Harold says.

Set after 4x16, in which we learn about Harold's familiarity with medical marijuana.

Peak Effect by astolat

"Ask me something," Harold said abruptly. "Anything—anything you want to know—"

Behavioral Therapy by esteefee

Finch wants something out of John. The trick is figuring it out when John can barely think.

Secrets I have held in my heart (I just wanna be yours) by violentdaylight

“This is how it will go,” Harold says conversationally. “I won’t touch you, I won’t kiss you, in fact I won’t do anything to you at all. I’ll just sit here,” he says, letting himself sink against the upholstery, “and enjoy the view.”

The Rest is Silence by hedda62

Finch was in the Library multitasking, feeding Bear and forging a research grant while making puns about computer bugs and (Reese was pretty sure) Hamlet; Reese was in the bathroom in his loft dressing abrasions and thinking vaguely about Finch's voice as antibiotic ointment. Or possibly lubricant.

Intimacy by astolat

"Well, Harold," John said, shrugging, "I guess we're going to get to know each other better."

Gen

The Great Friendship Caper by galaxysoup

Finch comes up with a way to curb Leon’s tendency to wind up in trouble. Unfortunately for Reese, the NYPD, and several (mostly) innocent bystanders, it involves socializing.

a lone star shining (sun is rising) by hito

John leaves the hotel before the night is out. Episode tag for 215.

Pen Pals by galaxysoup

Reese and Sofia keep in touch.

#person of interest #kelly watches person of interest #my rec list #because chiomi is a life-ruiner and an enabler and all sorts of other bad things #poi #harold/finch #rinch #this got out of hand sorry guys #haroldfinch #poi rec list

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alanjguitar · 4 years

Text

The Best Electric Guitars Under $300 in 2020

There are many great axes out there for those of you on a tight budget, and I’ve picked the best of the best electric guitars under $300 for you to try out.

At this price point, you need to know what to expect from a guitar.

As far as the foundation goes — that is, the tonewoods and other non-electrical components — these guitars can in many ways rival electrics worth several hundred dollars more.

It’s when you get into the pickups that the difference is evident; these guitars are wired for beginners, and while they won’t blow the minds of any audiences, they’re perfect for practicing and building your skill set.

This under $300 price range is great for entry-level musicians, as well as for acoustic guitarists who are wanting to try their hands at some amped up electric work.

Our Recommendation

It’s an unusual choice for me, but our winner in this review is a model from Gibson’s child company, Epiphone.

The Epiphone Les Paul Studio LT is a great beginner’s electric guitar; it has a really solid build, a mahogany body that supports sustain, and two humbucking Zebra pickups that are as powerful as you can hope for at this price point.

If I were looking for my first electric guitar all over again this is definitely the one I would go with.

Jumping now to the lesser side of this spectrum, and we’ll find the Squier Affinity Series Telecaster. It too is a good electric guitar for beginners, but at the below $300 mark I think the single coil pickups generate enough buzz to be distracting.

It plays well and is a fun Tele to jam on, but with only 21 frets and no special features giving it a boost of coolness, it’s my least favorite of this roundup.

The 4 Best Electric Guitars Under $300 – Overview

#4 Squier Affinity Series Telecaster

youtube

3.75/5 Star Rating

Specs

Body – Alder

Neck – Maple

Fingerboard – Maple

Electronics – Dual Vintage-Style single coil Tele pickups

Pros

A tonewood combo that makes a Telecaster sound like a Telecaster

Comfortable to play “C” shape neck

Pickups designed for vintage Telecaster tone

Cons

Only 21 frets limits your riffing capabilities

Low end single coil pickups have a lot of buzz and feedback

Review

For the most part, I’m not one to knock a certain guitar just because it comes from a maker who is considered “cheap.” There are some exceptions to this, but Squier is not one of them.

I like Squiers just fine, especially their higher end guitars, as they do a good job of replicating Fender’s most famous models in both looks and sounds.

The Squier Affinity Series Telecaster is a good enough Fender Telecaster remake to make it to this list of the best electrics under $300, and overall is a great choice for your first electric guitar. In fact, this is the second time it’s made our lists, and you can read more about it here.

It meets all the basic standards of quality: solid construction, fun and comfortable playability, dependable wiring, decent tone, and good aesthetics.

However, its pickups leave something to be desired, which we’ll talk about just a little later.

This Squier Tele’s body is made of alder, a lightweight tonewood with a well-defined upper midrange, good sustain, and great attack. Its the wood that Fender uses on the majority of their guitars, and you can read Fender’s article to find out more about it.

In almost every Fender, and in this Squier, an alder body meets a maple neck and fingerboard, which really sharpens your tone and gives Telecasters their bright, crystalline sound.

This makes the Squier Affinity Tele just one step away from greatness, only missing the mark with its substandard single coils.

These pickups are fine for at-home applications, especially if you’re playing at a low volume. But, the moment you turn it up to 11 you’ll find that the Vintage-Style Telecaster single coils become overbearingly noisy.

Considering all it has going for it and the ease with which pickups can be replaced, these pickups are not enough reason to pass on this guitar. Ask yourself how loud you need to play, and if the answer is “not very,” and you’d love to see yourself with a Telecaster, this could be the guitar for you.

#3 Yamaha PAC112V

youtube

4/5 Star Rating

Specs

Body – Alder

Neck – Maple

Fingerboard – Rosewood

Electronics – Neck: Yamaha Alnico V single coil Middle: Yamaha Alnico V single coil Bridge: Yamaha Alnico V humbucker

Pros

Versatile pickup configuration and controls to dial in your tone

Lightweight alder body reduces player fatigue

Great for many different genres and playing styles

Cons

Can be very noisy due to three pickups

So many pickup configurations can overwhelm beginners

Review

Yamaha’s Pacifica series guitars are great beginner electrics. They give you a lot of control over your tone, and with three pickups you can tune into whatever is best for your preferred genre.

This PAC112V has a lot going for it. It’s got a great alder + maple tonewood combo, bringing its sound pretty close to modern Telecasters.

It sports a C-shaped neck and rosewood fingerboard, so you can play for hours without excessive finger pain and hand cramps. This setup promotes speed, so practicing scales and licks will come with ease.

The Yamaha PAC112V is one of the rare beginner guitars with three pickups. Two single coils join a bridge-position humbucker, all under one tone control and a 5-way selector switch, so you can play around with different sounds to find what works best for your needs.

Add to this a push-pull coil switching feature found in the volume control, and you can really tweak your tone for just about every genre except death metal.

This can be a little too much control for a beginner, who should be focused less on precise tone and more on technique, but it’s always fun to experiment to find the tone that works best for you.

I think Yamaha’s are great, and this entry-level instrument can carry you through every practice and beyond til you’re ready to hit a real stage.

#2 Ibanez RG421

youtube

4.5/5 Star Rating

Specs

Body – Mahogany

Neck – Maple

Fingerboard – Jatoba

Electronics – Dual Quantum humbuckers

Pros

Lighting fast Wizard III neck

Mahogany + maple tonewood combo for great tonal balance

Powerful Quantum humbuckers

Cons

Quantum humbuckers have too much noise at high volumes

Cheap plastic nut reduces note clarity

Review

I’m a huge Ibanez fan, and the RG421 could have had the top spot if its pickups weren’t so noisy when you crank up the volume.

As far as playability goes, this is an amazing electric guitar, and any beginner can almost immediately feel like a shred-master with this axe in their hands.

The Wizard III neck is one of my favorite in the world, with an ultra thin profile that makes riffs practically explode from your fingertips.

Ibanez’s RG421 is made with mahogany and maple, which respectively are great for low to mid and high range frequencies, making this guitar really well balanced in terms of tone. Mahogany adds depth and darkness while maple contributes sparkle and articulation, combining to form an electric that sounds great no matter where it’s played.

Unfortunately, the Quantum humbuckers in this guitar are not great at cancelling out unwanted buzz, so even at medium volumes you can start to get feedback and annoying fuzziness. Not a huge problem, but it’s worth talking about.

You might find the action set a bit too low for many uses, and for beginners whose fingers aren’t dialed in for finesse, I’d recommend having it setup just a bit higher.

In the end, I had a tough time choosing between the Ibanez RG421 and the Epiphone Les Paul for first place, but I think the Epiphone is more versatile overall so I had to give it the crown.

Think Ibanez might be the brand for you but just not this model? Check out the Ibanez Mikro in this review.

#1 Epiphone Les Paul Studio LT

youtube

5/5 Star Rating

Specs

Body – Mahogany

Neck – Mahogany

Fingerboard – Rosewood

Electronics – Neck: 650R Epiphone Zebra Ceramic humbucker Bridge: 700T Epiphone Zebra Ceramic humbucker

Pros

60’s SlimTaper “D” neck profile gives classic comfortable playing

Powerful budget Epiphone Zebra humbuckers give loads of power with little extra buzz

A very close remake of the famous Gibson Les Paul

Cons

Can benefit from a tuning machine upgrade

Review

Epiphones were at one time a guitar brand that I would ignorantly consider to be too cheap to play. But, with age comes wisdom (hopefully) and now I know them as one of my favorite names in electric guitars.

The Epiphone Les Paul Studio LT is a true-to-form replica of Gibson’s iconic Les Paul, differing only slightly in a few ways but for a price that’s roughly $1000 less.

First, we’ll start with similarities.

Like the Gibson it’s based on, this Epiphone Les Paul is an all-mahogany build in the body and neck, which gives Les Paul its signature fat, warm sound.

It’s equipped with a smooth-playing rosewood fingerboard whose naturally oily surface feels great on the fingertips and transmits each vibration with sonic sweetness.

The neck is in the Gibson-style of the 1960s, a SlimTaper “D” profile that incrementally curves in going toward the upper frets, giving you a thin enough field for speedy solos but maintaining enough space for gripping chords with ease.

Last of the similarities, it looks pretty much exactly like any name-brand Les Paul, save for having an Epiphone logo rather than the Gibson.

The differences are harder to spot, but of course they exist.

Least obvious is that Epiphones are machine-made, without any of the finesse that comes with Gibson’s hand-binding or other attention to detail.

Next, you’ll notice that the tuning machines are definitely not the greatest. They hold well enough to not be annoying, but you will have to retune a little every few songs.

Lastly, Gibson’s use top-of-the-line humbuckers, whereas Epiphone uses their house brand. Of course, this changes the tone a lot, but the Epiphone Zebra pickups in the Les Paul Studio LT are perfect for practicing, and might even suffice for playing small shows. No doubt, I’d play at least an open mic with this guitar.

It’s got a thick tone with great sustain and a well-pronounced low to midrange. The highs are fine, but don’t exactly scream like they would if the pickups were higher quality.

All in all, I think this is a great guitar for the price, and if you were to upgrade the tuning machines and pickups, you could have an almost professional grade instrument in the Epiphone Les Paul Studio LT. Looking for a hollow body electric? Epiphone has a great guitar you can read about in our hollow body review.

Buyer’s Guide – Choosing The Best Electric Guitar Under 300

Who Should Buy a Guitar in this Price Range?

I would consider this price range to be mostly for beginner players. It is, as a matter of fact, the best price range for beginners.

At less than under $300, guitars will start to have some annoying problems. Think sharp fret edges, bad tuning and intonation, wiring issues, and poor playability. However, there are a few good choices at under $200, and we’ve outlined them for you here.

Between $200 and $300, you start to see electric guitars that are made with a decent standard of quality. They’re perfect for learning and practicing, and you can really start to master your hobby on these instruments.

Intermediate players who already own an electric probably won’t find much of an upgrade in this price range. Sure, if you’re playing a FirstAct electric, each guitar on this list can blow that out of the water. But, if you already know how to play pretty well and are looking to take your trade to the next level, I’d recommend spending a little more. We wrote about the best electric guitars under $500 that might be perfect for you.

Professionals already know that these aren’t meant for them, and I don’t need to say much more about it. Unless you’ve got the money to blow and are looking for a guitar to smash on stage, none of these electrics are really worth the time of an expert musician.

Are Electric Guitars Under $300 Good?

Good is subjective, and it depends on who you ask.

Fancy guitar connoisseurs will probably tell you no, that these guitars are substandard.

I like to take a more realistic approach, and consider the pros and cons of each model and who is most likely to buy a guitar in this range.

Overall, these are “good” guitars, or else they wouldn’t have made it to our list of the best electrics under $300. They play great, look good, and sound good enough to please amateur to intermediate player.

However, they’re not good in the sense that I wouldn’t play any serious show with them. The pickups just can’t cut it, and you’ll sound unprofessional in any kind of real-world performance.

So in short, they are not only good, but great for beginners, but they are not good guitars for anyone wanting to do professional performing or recording.

What are Electrics Under $300 Good For?

Genre-wise, I’ve got a guitar in this list that you can use in any genre.

The best for metal is definitely the Ibanez. Its super fast Wizard III neck and dual Quantum humbuckers give you the speed and low-end power you need for the heaviest music genres.

After that one, the other electric guitars reviewed here are pretty versatile and can be played in, I’d say, every genre. I recommend the Squier Telecaster for things like country, pop, and soft punk, the Yamaha Pacifica for most rock genres, funk, and jazz, and the Epiphone Les Paul for all rock genres, blues, and most other styles.

Can Electric Guitars Under $300 Be Upgraded?

This is a big yes from me. Not only can they be, but I’d recommend it.

The bones, so to speak, of electric guitars under $300 are usually great, and barely differ from guitars costing several hundred more.

It’s the hardware and electronics in these guitars that keep them at a low price, and these are parts that are relatively easy and fun to upgrade.

As an entry-level guitarist, you might not want to buy your first electric and immediately rip out its pickups, but after you’ve played for a while and your interest in electric guitars has grown, changing out your pickups for something with more power and precision can be a great project.

My first ever DIY guitar upgrade was upgrading the tuning machines on my Yamaha bass. It was a bit stressful, but after it was done, I felt like a champion. In some of these guitars, the tuning machines can definitely use a boost, so if you feel handy and want to make the guitar feel more like it’s yours, I highly recommend giving this a go. This article from Wired Guitarist will walk you through it step-by-step.

The Final Word

The under $300 range has more guitars than I can count, some of them great like the ones I’ve reviewed here, and some of them total trash.

Before you make any multi-hundred dollar decision, I think you should do a lot of research and soul-searching to find out what exactly it is that you want and need from a guitar.

Any that you choose from this list will do you good, and if one of them calls your name, I don’t think you can go wrong.

More about electric guitars:

Best electric guitars for the money

Top electric guitars under $200

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