william.scherk

Over at the other place, Neil Parille posted an excerpt of and link to an article by some dude named David Bentley Hart. I don't agree with Hart, but was somewhat taken aback by the "kill yourself" commentary of two gibbering also-rans who soil their Pampers Pullups over there . . . Greg Davis and Doug Bandler. I post a sample of the discourse below. I have wondered how and when SOLO might dwindle down to pure raging nitwittery given enough time. I think the end is nigh, me. The forum is now circling the drain. Incidentally, there is a nice lady there, a fully Christian believer, Rosie, who persists in arguing with her fellow Kiwis on the subject of gawds. She put up an appalled post calling the nutcases on their meanness of spirit, and found herself subject to a barrage of gibbering epithets herself. The ground has turned sour over there. She might make a decent addition to the OL menagerie . . . if she is ready to haul herself out of the rotating currents. If anyone here thinks OL gets dire and tiresome and hysterical from time to time, with borderline personalities stalking narcissists and so on . . . get a load of the competition. Intellectual heights, anyone? -- a roach like Parille -- annoying little piss ant -- annoying little cunt -- nihilistic piece of shit -- your obvious hysteria -- you silly cunt -- Neil, for you, perhaps suicide is in order. Just a thought -- He may as well kill himself -- Ant Parille is one of the most intellectually dishonest scumbags I've seen All joyous celebrations of life from this thread, "Believe It or Not: David B. Hart on the New Atheism."

I'd rather put it this way: "Shayne doesn't know if the Mises Organization is full of Catholics."

Why? I don't follow your reasoning here, brother. Are you familiar with the wilder claims originating from Callahan and his aversion to straightforward research? Have you been to his website? We are talking Woo with a capital W. If you are comparing Yoga claims with TFT claims, or Meditation claims with TFT claims, go ahead, that might be fun and instructive, in the sense that Yoga boosters have nothing like VT in their brochures. I think, however, a more useful comparison would be the claims of utter woo (Pranic healing or Ayurveda or TM flying) to TFT's more wacked out promoters. If some Yoga adherents claim "our program will reduce your blood pressure better than weight loss and exercise," yeah, I think it is wise to ask "How do you know that?" If certain types of meditation are accompanied by astounding medical or therapeutic claims, the same question occurs to me. You? PS -- it occurs to me I am missing your point, James. Yikes. Sorry for the autistic moment. Yes . . . yoga and meditation have been subject to research and we can find pretty reasonable results consistent with the rather modest claims made for them.

See the "Myths" article I referenced above. In the first paragraph, there is this statement: "I completely left and repudiated TFT and Voice Technology (VT) 6 years ago in March, 2004 and since that time have published numerous critical analyses of TFT and also an account of my experience with TFT and Voice Technology." William, maybe you're confusing "the basic technique" with "TFT." The basic technique goes way back. Although Callahan appears to have thought he was discovering it, he wasn't. I don't think Pignotti has said that she thinks tapping has no usefulness in treating "stress and negative emotions." See this from her article -- I'm in a rush and don't have time to re-provide the link: There continued to be discussion of the technique on her list well after her severing with Callahan. Ellen, by highlighting the complete repudiation of TFT and Callahan I meant only to add to your characterization of 'disenchantment' . . . I am not quite sure what you mean by 'the basic technique.' Maybe if you have time or inclination you could flesh that out, and even put some more meat on the bones of your intriguing contention that the basic technique had been known/practiced long before Callahan claimed to discover it. But, no bother if you don't. I am reading through the posts to Monica Pignotti's TFT-ALGO list subsequent to her break with Roger Callahan. If you mean that Pignotti does not 'throw out the baby' (of the tapping procedure) with the bathwater (the whole encrusted system built by Callahan), I think I see what you mean. Somewhere in the middle of the tosh/advanced training/crust was a technique, a procedure, a protocol -- not simply tapping, of course -- that seemed to offer relief for some symptoms of distress -- and more importantly, could better have been understood by rigourous examination within the larger clinical and academic community. Pignotti didn't reject explicitly the idea that something in the whole procedure was of value and worthy of study, although she did abandon TFT practice herself. Is that somewhat like what you meant? If so, I agree. The interest to me is in details of her 'disenchantment' leading to the repudiation and the details of her debunkings. It makes for compelling reading for someone like me, but would perhaps be deadly dull otherwise. Regarding the 'snark-out' comment, I meant to make a comparison between what Pignotti appears to have faced recently (call it calumnies) and normal scientific bickering and dickering. I did not mean that the TFTers were inerested in Objectivish things, but that the wacko wing battling her subsequently was more like the, ahem, disputants that occasionally consume so much oxygen in Objectivish purlieus. Anyway, that she tailed out on TFT while discussing with her colleagues is perhaps not so important in the larger scheme of things. She is a defector, so to speak, and her journey back from 'cultism' is intriguing to me. She certainly hasn't done any TFT since her the break. Incidentally, I was surprised to see a post from William Scott Scherk in on that list subsequent to Monica's departure from the TFT establishment. And a certain person some of us know as Dragonfly . . . and, well, Nathaniel Branden calmly explaining the apparent superiority of chakra based tapping over plain old meridian tapping. I had no idea how fully he was into the woo.

See the "Myths" article I referenced above. In the first paragraph, there is this statement: "I completely left and repudiated TFT and Voice Technology (VT) 6 years ago in March, 2004 and since that time have published numerous critical analyses of TFT and also an account of my experience with TFT and Voice Technology." Right. She did her study in 2001. Yup. Which Pignotti details . . . for those interested in the water, the dam and the so on, it shows Callahan to be distinctly blind to what her findings mean, if not actively dishonest, in my opinion. I am just now reading posts on the TFT-ALGO list in which she announced her decision. Sad how some used the event to attack her integrity. Since then, she has been subject to some rather unpleasant internet 'attacks' accusing her of varied crimes and misdemeanors. All false. Very sad and I hope not indicative of much more than that a few TFT nutcases wished to discredit her by means foul. She is still fighting a rear-guard action to get rid of some of the worst calumnies, which is sad and grotesque in context of a scientific dispute, but par for the course in the ongoing Objectivish Snarkout. I wondered. You wrote "Monica Pignotti . . . became disenchanted . . . (at which time NB distanced from Callahan, too)." Any clearer recollection of how Branden 'distanced' from Callahan, or clues as to how the distancing was made manifest? On his website today there are four references to Callahan, all fairly laudatory (but, I note, dating from 1998, as far as I can tell). I suppose someone might send him a note and ask at what distance he presently finds himself from Callahan, but if I were him, I would keep mum on the subject and not get dragged off into another Objectivish skirmish; I certainly don't think he would repudiate Callahan as has Pignotti -- he has probably had enough repudiation for several lifetimes. I guess Nathaniel Branden could be said to have distanced from Callahan simply by saying nothing in support of him in the aftermath of the Pignotti repudiation. Indeed, he subscribed to the TFT-ALGO list, but gave no opinion there (as I can yet find, anyhow).

Ellen twice mentions Monica Pignotti . . . Yes on the time frame. Pignotti posted her "Why Roger Callahan and I have Split" to the Nathanial Branden Yahoo list on March 2, 2004. I haven't as yet found a post or posts in which Nathaniel Branden clearly distanced himself from Callahan. Perhaps Ellen could help out tracking down the reference. Ellen's take on Pignotti's repudiation of Thought Field Therapy and Voice Technology is reasonably close to the the actual events. Pignotti's complete repudiation followed her single-blind study, detailed in the post referenced above. She also writes of her TFT experience here. See also her article "Callahan fails to meet the burden of proof for Thought Field Therapy claims,'** published in the peer-reviewed Journal Of Clinical Psychology. The important point skeptics raise, and one that hasn't quite penetrated Dr Hardin's defense ramparts, is that TFT's success in reducing distress should not -- without further study -- be claimed to uniquely originate in the technique itself without comparing TFT success to other modalities. To put it another way, TFT adherents suggest that 5 minute phobia cure 'successes' cannot be attributed to characteristics shared by other treatments for phobia - that the successes are revolutionary and better than anything else. This is the hinge for my questions and critique. If it is claimed that the 5 minute phobia cure is better than imaginal exposure, for example, then the burden of proof is on those making the claim. So, if Dr Hardin or anyone else claims TFT/5 minute phobia cure is 'superior' to extant, empirically-supported therapies -- the burden of proof is on Dr Hardin. To date, Dr Hardin has blustered and issued dire maunderings and appeals to authority. As for Dr Hardin's notions that opposition to inflated claims is 'propaganda,' the insinuation that Scherk is evul for countering such claims, the implication that critical inquiry is something Ayn Rand would decry as 'anti-life,' this is sad. I don't understand how questioning inflated and as-yet unsupported claims can be swept off the table by those who style themselves objective thinkers. The further suggestion that Nathaniel Branden's support of Callahan is probative? Not credible. ____________ ** [Abstract] Callahan's response evades the key issues raised by merely restating and elaborating upon what has already been said, providing citations that are out of context and irrelevant to the issues at hand, and misrepresenting what was actually said by his critics and me and the authors of articles he cites. He spends paragraphs refuting "straw men." He provides additional anecdotes, which offer no convincing evidence for his claims. His critics have expressed concern that Callahan and Thought Field Therapy (TFT) proponents will cite his response article, as published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, to promote TFT, as TFT proponents have repeatedly done for the non-peer-reviewed earlier issue devoted to TFT. Callahan has been given an unprecedented opportunity to present his work in a reputable journal without prior peer review and has failed to meet the burden of proof for his claims, thus undermining his own claim, that his work has been rejected solely as a result of bias against innovation.

It would be great if you could dig up a quote and reference. I found a fairly plain statement from Branden here (emphases added): I've just manually reviewed 6500 consecutive posts on Nathaniel's old Yahoo Group list and haven't found it yet. I suspect I'll find it in the next several thousand. The search function doesn't work there any more unless you refer to a particular post by number. Maybe this is the Branden post you recall, Brant (I found it by a bit of googling on 'site:yahoo.com "nathaniel branden" tapping callahan' and then poking about): It is dated December 1, 2002. Link.

This thread began with Dr Hardin touting TFT on his personal authority, and subsequently devolved into "Branden says it's great. Disregard criticism and avoid rational tests of its claims, on his authority." In other words, "Buy my magic pig. He's the best magic pig on earth. Don't criticize. Anyone who suspects my pig is not magic is full of shit and mean and insulting and ridiculous." Nope. One would be saying, "Not convinced that the pig is magic." Consider the crust, Brant. TFT has little or nothing to do with conversation. It has to do with Miracles, boxed and sold -- a procedure that involves meridians, 'energy,' chakras, and a mountains of irrational gush. This is all magical thinking. I am boggled that Objectivish people can be gulled by magical pig claims -- moreover that they reject a priori any attempts to critically examine the pig. Nope. Client: "I've got a phobia." Therapist: "I can fix it in five minutes!"

It would be great if you could dig up a quote and reference. I found a fairly plain statement from Branden here (emphases added): Our bodies have meridians, Brant, through which energy flows. Imbalances or blockages lead to emotional disturbances. Gah.

Both Dr. Branden and I have found something that works much more effectively than any other alternative approach with respect to eliminating negatives. For those interested in Nathaniel Branden's full remarks on 'Energy Psychology,' the text can be found here: Brief Comments on Energy Psychology I don't know exactly what Dr Hardin means by citing Branden. Perhaps the authority of Branden on the subject is all that needs to be said on the subject. If Branden says EP has made revolutionary contributions, then we can all stop thinking. Seriously, Hardin has given us nothing but testimonials and an indication that empirical research is suspect. Is that good enough for Objectivists? What I don't understand is how one checks his premises with regard to the 'energy' therapies. How would Dr Hardin know he is wrong? Here is an odd bit from the Branden piece (emphasis added): Objectivist chakras? Ye gawds. Looking deeper into the touted Seemorg Matrix Work (since renamed Advanced Integrative Therapy) we find a welter of tosh and piffle, a grab-bag of astonishing claims and theoretic notions (emphases added). Muscle-testing! Abreaction! Muscle testing! Chakras! Yee haw !! And all seemingly endorsed by Branden. From the same page, immediately below the above tosh: There is more woo . . . If anyone is wondering about the deeper theoretical basis of Seemorg Matrix Work (emphasis added). . . Yup. Moving that old 'electromagnetic energy' out of the body with 'energy movement.' Archetypes and alters. But, what the heck, Dr Branden says it's great. And Dr Hardin says it's great. That is apparently all an Objectivist needs to know. Case closed. Empirical study is suspect. If in doubt, read The Fountainhead. Now, I won't belabour the point too much more in this post. I just find it astonishing that Dr Hardin has kicked down the fences between reason and woo, and expects his audience here to take his and Branden's authority and use it as a brush to sweep away all questions and critiques. I hope I understand this. 'Bias' could be a skewing factor in studies. Does it follow that Dr Hardin is free of bias in his non-study of TFT?

Speaking of unreliable sources. As if that's an accurate description. Well, no more accurate, perhaps, than your muffed reporting of ARI's millions devoted to an online university. Once you dipped a toe into the bathwater of PARC on SolitaryPassion.com, your reputation was fixed. It's just the way things go. For some time, the to and fro on PARC was more or less a team sport, with opinion sliced into two loaves, fer it and agin it. Fully in support, fully in opposition. It hardly mattered to Lindsay Perigo, for example, that you had penned small pearls of cogent and clear-sighted critiques of PARC over several years, or that you had praised both Robert Campbell and Neil Parille for their systematic and sustained critiques. Once he and we saw a muffled and rather insubstantial positive mumble about PARC in his playground, you were instantly issued a team jacket. I don't know whether it was a native decorum or a fine weariness at repeating yourself (repeating critiques of PARC), but the way you slurred out some positive aspects of PARC and made them public without underlining your continuing disdain for its defects played into the hands of the team leaders. As far as James Valliant was concerned, he saw a new member on his team. He adopted you as his defender -- and you accepted his gratitude for coming to his defense. Now, James is too stupid and monomaniacal to understand your earlier published criticisms, of course, if he had even read them, so for all intents and purposes, on the playboard as scored at Lindsay's sandbox, you became a PARC-booster. At no time did you issue a principled demurral or even a partial rejection of his gushing thanks. At no time in that forum did you say, "Not so fast, James, I still think your book is a piece of shit." So the fanatics of both teams assigned you fully to Team Valliant. Where you remain. That is just the way things go when you aren't forthright, when you can't or won't assemble your opinions in a firm, global, consistent, pattern. But we shouldn't, after all, hold you to a standard that you have never accepted. You are not prone to write essays, to start and sustain a discussion thread, to write lengthy structured analyses in which you thoroughly examine a topic. Not a fault, a feature of your talent. You are a talented proofreader and niggler, not suited for grand summaries and 'on one foot' declarations . . . That said, you surely must understand that on the big black and white screaming scoreboard of Visitors/Demons and Home/Angels, Ellen Stuttle is now seen as a supporter of both James Valliant and Lindsay Perigo. It may be a caricature, and an unfair one, but your talents at writing and exposition simply don't allow you to lay out your positions in a broad and coherent form that would let folks see the nuances and 'on the one hand's that form your opinions. In sum, your opinions on PARC are scattered far and wide in a sprawling archipelago of posts. Few are willing to list or summarize your positions, least of all you. So, when James touchingly thanked you (in his one-eyed way), and you muffed your chance to nuance your way out of a place he reserved for you on his front bench, the case was closed. Ellen Stuttle had gone over to the Home Team. Sad, not particularly fair or rational, but hey. Incidentally, up-thread you ask what explains my interest . . . this puzzles me. Are you not in possession of at least four score private messages from me? Had it only now occured to you to ask why I had an interest? And, seriously, could you not sketch out to your own satisfaction my motives, given the evidence of my many years on Objectivish forums? Gah.

I expect that if someone presented to Dr Hardin with a phobia, he would take a history, attempt to assess the severity of the person's distress and then attempt to alleviate the distress by some means. He would compare the efficacy of, say, exposure therapy to that of TFT, and then proceed to relieving the symptoms by the best means available. I would expect a Dr Hardin to diligently do his homework on the evidence that supports the several modalities, to dig into credible research, and to let his client/patient understand that TFT holds no special means to relieve distress. He would offer the client the best, evidence-based treatment, and he would carefully check his own knowledge base. He would say, "I can't give you anything but testimonials to the effectiveness of TFT. I can't point you to any materials that have even-handedly found that TFT is a superior modality. I cannot find anything that satisfies my criticisms of TFT. I can't promote a therapy that has failed its tests." This is so murky. That adequate amounts of the vitamins are necessary for health is a no-brainer. No vitamin C in your diet, get scurvy and die. Etcetera. I suppose that Dr Hardin may be referring to scientific research that has explored whether vitamin supplements are necessary above and beyond the minimum requirements. He may be referring to research that explored the relationship between taking extra vitamins and the prevention of serious conditions that plague humanity: vascular disease and cancer, perhaps. Who knows? All I get from the response is that Dr Hardin does not trust rigourous experiment and study to deliver rational, credible information. If this is true, that Dr Hardin disdains critical inquiry in medicine and the fruits of such inquiry is quite sobering, if not shocking. It suggests that he has put down some very useful tools of rationality -- if not that he is unacquainted with many tools that augment our human ability to separate out the crap and quackery from the reasonable. It further suggests, on the subject of TFT, that evidence be damned, that rational inquiry or the results of rigourous scientific methodology are superfluous, that making reasoned decisions about health can proceed without benefit of searching, critical tests. It boggles my mind that some folk who march under the Objectivist banner of reason can be so cavalier in dismissing some sharp tools of reason. I just don't get how this squares with Objectivism.

Well, the theory behind Thought Field Therapy (of which the 5 minute phobia cure is one example) is tosh. That is a second problem besides the one noted above. Another problem with TFT is that its practitioners avoid any attempts to investigate it by standard rational means (science). There are further problems with TFT, which can be seen in the Skeptical Inquirer article by Brandon A. Gaudiano and James D. Herbert, "Can We Really Tap Our Problems Away? A Critical Analysis of Thought Field Therapy." I include two small excerpts from the article, in which the authors discuss alternative explanations for the claims of efficacy: In addition to the absence of controls for spontaneous remission, no research has ruled out factors that are common-to greater or lesser degrees-in all psychotherapies. These include placebo effects resulting from the mere expectation for improvement, demand characteristics, therapist enthusiasm and support, therapist-client alliance, and effort justification (i.e., the tendency to report positive changes in order to justify the effort exerted; Lohr, Lilienfeld, Tolin, and Herbert 1999). Thus, despite the absence of empirical evidence to support TFT’s claims of tremendous effectiveness, it would not be surprising to find that the procedure sometimes produces benefits for some individuals owing to these common mechanisms shared by all forms of psychotherapy. Serious psychotherapy innovators go to great lengths to conduct studies to demonstrate that the hypothesized active ingredients of their procedures outperform these so-called “nonspecific” effects. No such effort has been made by the promoters of TFT. In addition to nonspecific and placebo effects, TFT appears to incorporate procedures from existing, well-established therapies. TFT therapists instruct clients to focus repeatedly on distressing thoughts and images during the tapping sequences. Such repeated exposure to distressing cognitions is a well-known behavior therapy technique called imagery exposure (Foa and Meadows 1997). Furthermore, TFT therapists utilize cognitive coping statements throughout treatment (e.g., “I accept and forgive them for what they did”), which represent another established cognitive therapy technique. In short, any effects that TFT might show can be readily explained by known mechanisms, without invoking unfounded concepts such as “perturbations” and “thought fields” (Hooke 1998a). I am often surprised when self-styled Objectivists, who valorize reason and scientific method, can be so easily gulled by quackery and snake-oil. The lack of critical thinking and inquiry is surprising. For example, how can an Objectivish person seriously swallow the mumbo-jumbo about 'thought fields' and 'perturbations' of same, as an explanation of TFT's workings? Moreover, are any of the Objectivish who are thrilled enough with TFT to endorse it and recommend it -- are any of these folks familiar with the kooky claims for 'Voice Technology'? I am glad that Dennis feels less bound by anxieties surrounding his return to the dating market, but would suggest that he pull in his horns and not shill for a quack.

Intellectually they are neo-con nothings, under the thumb of The Great One. --Brant Brant, maybe you might learn something if you ever tried to find out what's going on at ARI these days instead of presuming you know what "they" are. Ellen had also written: Although Brant has not yet followed Ellen's friendly suggestion, her two claims are a good place for anyone to start. Did ARI get a grant to set up an online university? If yes, where did the grant come from? Similarly, Ellen says that unspecified leaders expect to absorb TAS. Will she let us know which leaders, and will she give a clue as to how the unnamed leaders hope to accomplish the absorption? On the face of it, such a plan for 'absorbing' the Open Objectivism Org seems to originate in Cloud Cuckoo land. -- I generally enjoy reading Ellen's excerpts from documents that illuminate points of Objectivist history; can she back up her assertions and statements with further information? In this case, her statements about ARI are unmoored at the moment. As for her similarly unmoored "Reports of imminent demise of ARI are greatly exaggerated" -- who reported on an imminent demise? Who is she talking to?

I have been reading OL a fair bit lately, but using most of my internet time to schmooze and socialize in the Vancouver underground scene. Though OLers who follow Schismatics (tribal affairs) might be interested in the discussion taking place at The Other Place under the rubric "Quote of the Day: Honor!" Against my better judgement I entered discussion on my bugaboo (Objectivish obfuscations of and issues congealing around 'Altruism'). I was not surprised by the aphasic responses of the direly stupid and bitter, but was pleasantly surprised by Lindsay Perigo's note to discussants that they try to understand each other, and that they put their invective back in the pot for a while. Your mileage may vary (and you may agree with my erstwhile opponents on the topics I got all lathered up about) . . . As for this bit, I should note that the "Extremist Site" blocking is done according to a list derived automatically. The Greyhound contract for internet machines 'protects' consumers from any expression of opinions that include certain key-words. One can only imagine how many key-words went klang! on their servers. As for the Australian impetus, the reaction against the looming strictures will come from across the board, and be loudest from the left-extremists themselves (in America, similar rumblings about 'licensing' bloggers has met with a Wall Of Derision form the usual suspects on the hard left (Atrios, Markos, Josh, etc.) It is as if the Ladies Temperance Union has erupted from the dungheap of history once again. I don't foresee any actual implementation of the Pearl-Clutcher's Plans To Make The Internets Nice. Best regards to my OL Frenz !! If you ever wonder what I do when I am not imitating a gadfly on Objectivish forums, see my Facebook page (Bill Scherk). Australia does seem to be on the bleeding edge of internet censorship, but I still don’t see how SLOP could be banned there and still have those Alexa ratings. It’s more likely SLOP has found it’s way onto a private filter list, that private companies are using to keep the internet activity at the airport from becoming something actionable. I said before I wouldn't be surprised if Jabba was denied entry to the US because of his Obama/Mussolini execution ravings.

You got to be kidding, Master Coates. Although my hands are scarred by multiple knuckle-raps from your correction baton, I still respect you and urge you once again to go out and get laid or something. The teaching must stop at dusk and the loving begin. Your Friend on the Internets,

Right, it's by me, the Doctor Who throwback. My favourite WTF moment in the podcast are these lines: Now you may ask 'don't you have free will?' as an adult, to unearth your errors or change your mistakes and change your sexuality. I think that can be done in some cases but for the most part, by everything I have seen psychology is simply not advanced enough to enable a person to do itt. Then it gets worse. The full rampaging stupidity of an Objectivist who gave up inquiry for a pontificate. Ick. If you watch this thing again on Youtube, make sure you enable the captions. They allow you to savour the maunderings of a man who hasn't cracked a book on this subject in the past two decades at least, let alone examined the research. This is a dunderhead on the subject of sexual orientation. . . . it is sad that this is the present day figurehead for Randianism. The only more horrifying leader than Peikoff would be Diana Hsieh. I think all Aspergers/moralists/absolutists/dogmateers/bannathoners should be barred from the Objectivish papacy.

Now I looked up how to embed, here is the new number two. Still creepy, still fun.

I had posted these snaps from Doreen Grey and Jeremy Gluck's video project, and asked "What sense of life this?" Here is the video from which the snaps came.

Yeah, I will use that phrase in the PR for my installation come January: "Impatient and Direct." Not-so-oddly, that captures an aspect of my character that is pretty much inexpungible. My work is based consciously on some of what I call "Impact Images" -- scenes in my mind that have a combination of emotionaly clarity and inchoate events. I sometimes get haunted by feeling/images and by sound/images. The first may be redirected entirely into prose, the second into a song. I rarely get busy on the canvas or bristol and so when I do hit the paints or pastels I am usually in a hell-bent fury to get some of the things that haunt me out into view. This is one of a suite of feelings that the pictures should engender if my aim was true: I was exposing the darkness of addiction to my peers. I wanted their vanity and self-destruction to lurk in the images, I wanted pride and hubris to be apparent to the folks whose lives led to the hauntings underlying this series.

It is difficult to reconstruct the development, Jonathan, and not so very important, but I will try. I have always been able to articulate why I liked this or that piece, and I thought I was reasonably well-informed for a run-of-the-mill ignorant northerner -- until 1979. I was recruited to model for a Jeff Wall Cibachrome, and got to see the 'critical theory' of art-making from the inside. Wall was associated with the Ian Wallace group at the Vancouver Art Gallery -- a moderately grotesque theoretical stance that borrowed the sludgiest, stupidest lingo from Lacan and Derrida and yadda yadda. The huge transparency was me on an orange couch with headphones on, nude. Nope, I was off the scales on Pollyanna. Sound of Music. Gush. Happy. Anne of Green Gables. Heidi. Oh golly. I drew at a young age, and seem to be stuck on Princesses and Queens and things around age 5. I very much enjoyed depicting the female form and face. In my middle school years I developed an inclination for Veronica and Archie comics, of which I attempted to copy the style of the figures. I then added outfits to the female forms, a la Rei Kawakubo pre-manga ultra-fashion uniform. My esthetic life exanded in Grade 12, when I was seventeen and had an art teacher in a lab coat who drove me patiently through a number of media and techniques. Beside me in class was The Horse Girl. She is probably now an Aspergery Objectivish person, and selling lavishly detailed Horse Portraits to the valley equestrian set for 8 grand a pop. Ah, well, I got Darwin in Grade seven, so I thought the only physical explosion worth alluding to was the loins straining to achieve Maximus. Evolution taught me that we humans, among oh so many species, have powerful, almost continuous sexual urges. The dominant message from the organism is to do the thing that gets more folks who will do the thing. The hokey-pokey. As you can see from my six-year old self beaming at the camera below, I did have a sunny disposition. My sense of life is generally sunny. I look at life as at a massive spectacle, almost always beyond comprehension, but wonderful, wonderful. Oh, the primal urges and senses cannot be creepy to me. They simply are what they are. One can project anything onto the object of attention, any thrill up the spine or queasy feeling. I get queasy around Banal Art. Much of the sludge produced by Critical Theory Bumpkins was dull to the point of suicide, but accompanied by such lofts of blah that the spectator was forced to provide all the meaning. Mine, most often, repulsion. Dead, banal, forced, trite-yet-Ultra-Cool, pretense as stiff and unyielding as a ditch full of putty. Here's a few snaps from a video exploring a few of my 1985-86 pastels. What sense of life this? I don't use the word evil, and I don't use the word evul lightly, but no, I heard zip from Kant until well into middle age. Of course the evul may well have drip fed through the intervening years by a magical kind of Eternal Soup Of Evul that grew more thick and loathsome and deadly as the centuries passed. Oh, you are wrong, quite wrong, but wrong in a good way, wrong in a seeking, an upward striving, ever higher to the inneffable heights of Mankwaman way. Wrong, but thrillingly, excessively, boisterously and triumphantly wrong. Uh, can't stand reading the sludgy Kant. My favourite philosopher is the straight-forward "critical common sense" Susan Haack, who tidily demolishes pretense. She tallies evidence and comes down on the side of a modest but robust empiricism.

It was indeed not only funny, but a bit creepy, and that's what I was counting on. After years as a punk frontman, what was left to do? More eyeliner? Something painful involving safety pins? The classic preemptory strike of we aging, male pattern baldness challenged males (the head shave)? \For the princesses among us, esthetic injuries are as painful as whiplash or a blow to the temple. I wonder what Princess Newberry would do if she found this pea under her mattress:

Our own homegrown radical in Vancouver said the same thing, Rick, mentioning the Black Bloc, the tiresome and stupid provocateurs who meet up at large events to sand the gears and lob cocktails. If Princess Newberry feels icky looking at the lighthearted side of Scherk, he will feel very icky indeed if he looks at my pastels . . .

Thanks. I asked some of my friends about Nomi and no one else seems to know of him -- even ones I thought were knowledgeable about that period. Funny. Well, some folks don't know their own bloodlines, let alone the creative genealogy of art/music. Frank spawned Elvis spawned Beatles spawned Nirvana spawned Lady Gaga. That is all some people need to know. Phil Coates -- feel free to ask questions of the Make-up Man. He may include your letter in one of his weekly shows.

Dan Ust asks about Klaus Nomi's popularity way back then (the magic years were 1977-1980). I asked my old art-rock buddy from the day and he reminded me that some of the seminal groups here like U-J3Rk5 were basicly on drip line from Nomi's veins by way of their schooling at the avant-garde college of the era. Remember, we were a village of 300, protecting each other from those who would do violence to us, so if only 100 might go see a Nomi show, all 300 would conceivably back up their friends in their freakshow art bands. George, thank you for the notice. Of course, everyone on camera showboats a bit in this docco, and I am no exception, but my acting training helps me fake spontaneity and my years battling Objectivish ick has sharpened my ability to cut to the chase. Michael, odd that you should take the fourth quadrant in the chi-square and end up with a Type One error right off the bat. That said, I understand what you are getting at, that a certain bundle of traits observed will later supply the aha! when you see this person associated with a certain avocation. And of course, frustration is a hallmark of humanity. A frustrated musician is one who either hates him his band, audience, talents, gift, training, orchestra, public, record company or hates him some gruesome combination of them all. Me, I was a lucky outlier. I did and do love almost all of those things. Moreover, I am this kind of musician: a singer who never has used a keyboard or fretboard or sequencer, and yet managed to write lyrics, melodies and arrangements and have them performed to the expectations of my mind's ear, by the excellent partners who are my friends -- talented songwriters themselves. If that is frustration, then yes, I was and am mightily frustrated. As my bio shows here on OL, it has been a while, but it is like riding a bike as I plot our comebacks. I am also pleased to announce my first video-art installation in January of 2011, with a whole floor of my interpretation of the theme presented upstairs by local installation genius Mad Dog. I am also resurrecting my old sideline of charcoal / french pastel drawings on T-shirts. Grrr, more frustration. To top off this litany of gritted teeth and promise deferred, I post the first in my series of Youtube commentary titled "Bill's Morning Makeup Tips." Those like George who have worked to appear composed and coherent on television can understand that it took me a long time to be able to be Bill Scherk on TV with the relatively same blithe nastiness that William Scott Scherk has exhibited on the internet.