Dustings #62
/Supporters, the final issue of this volume of the newsletter will be in your email box tonight.
The GLOMM Charity Auction will end this weekend. We are currently up over $1000, with another $300 or so worth of donations on top of that. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.
If you’d like to bid, you can still do so until the the auction ends, which will be at some point on Sunday. Just email me with your bid.
If you’d just like to contribute to the charity and recognize the GLOMM at the same time, you can do so on this donation page.
I need your help. Could you write (or have someone else write) a word on the back of a business card and then send me a picture of it? Similar to this?
The card doesn’t have to be on the table. Someone can be holding it or it can be resting on some other surface.
What I’m looking for is ultimately about 50 different pictures, with different words, different hand-writings, and different backgrounds. So if I could get 50 of you to send along a single pic, that should be all I need.
I’ll let you know what I’m using them for when I’ve collected them all.
Ideally, there will be a variety of hand writing styles, including some traditionally more “feminine” styles. So if there’s someone in your life with that style of handwriting, maybe ask them to write the word. But don’t go out of your way to do so. We only need a few words written in that style.
I’d like a good mix of shorter, simpler words, e.g., fish or dance. As well as longer more “interesting” words like jealousy or tablecloth.
If your date of birth is ODD, submit a simpler word.
If your date of birth is EVEN, submit a more complex word.
It doesn’t matter if you forget to do this, I’m just trying to get a good mix.
Don’t try to be too clever with the word you choose.
You can email me your pic when you have it. Put BC Project in the subject line so I can easily sort out those emails.
Thanks.
I had a very unusual experience the other day.
I was sitting at a coffee shop doing some work and there were two guys next to me who were talking. This is a small coffee shop, one where if anyone is talking, everyone is pretty much included in the conversation.
One of the guys was saying he was working his way through the Brittanica Great Books of the Wester World series. Which, from what I’ve learned, is a series of 54 volumes put out in 1952 collecting everything from Plato, to Don Quixote, to The Communist Manifesto. Essentially the sort of books that I, as an intellectual lightweight, can’t make it through two pages of before I fall asleep or get up to see what kind of snacks are in the cupboard.
I truly never feel dumber than when I try and read this sort of stuff.
Anyway, they were talking about this and from there got onto Carl Jung (who doesn’t seem to be represented in that series of books, but I wasn’t following their discussion too closely). Then one of the guys said, “It’s like the ‘collective unconscious’ theory. Do you know about that? Like if there was a jar of jellybeans down at the mall and you could win a prize by guessing how many were in the jar. If you took my guess, and your guess, and Andy’s guess [he gestured over to me, even though I wasn’t taking part in the conversation], and everyone else’s guess here, and you averaged them together, you would get very close to the number of jellybeans in the jar.”
Now, look, I don’t think that’s really an example of the “collective unconscious.” I mean… maybe it is. As I said, I don’t know about smart shit. But regardless, I perked up at this conversation. Was it happening? Was it really finally happening? Was someone really broaching a topic I could do a trick with?
I said to them, “Actually, I think it’s weirder than that. Knowing the jellybeans kind of makes sense, because at least that’s something we can all assess in some way. But my understanding is that the collective unconscious works even with things we can’t perceive. Like….” I wrote something down in my notebook. I told everyone it was a 2-digit number and asked everyone in the small shop to concentrate on what the number might be. Everyone offered up their guesses and I had Evan, the barista, average them on his calculator. Surprisingly (to everyone in the room not wearing a thumbwriter) the average of their guesses (when rounded) matched the number I had written down. The power of the collective unconscious.
Now, I’m not telling you that story because it’s that brilliant of a trick. And I’m not telling you it because it’s a good example of why you should keep a thumbwriter in your bag.
I’m mentioning this because I’m thinking of all the old books and how infrequently social magic was mentioned. But when it was they would sometimes say things like, “This is a good trick for when someone brings up the subject of ESP.” As if that’s a common subject people stumble upon all the time. “Yes, I have to pick Timmy up from baseball practice. Then I’m going to the grocery story. Also, do you think ESP can be learned, or is it something you’re born with?”
Unfortunately, unless you’re hanging out with deranged lunatics who say stuff like, “I wish dollars could float,” the subjects that would easily lead into tricks are rarely brought up in normal conversation, with a couple exceptions (gambling and astrology come to mind).
This story I just told is one of the few times in my life I’ve ever been handed an “in” for a trick on a silver platter. And I’m someone who is constantly looking for opportunities to perform, and trying to capitalize on discussions happening around me. But the truth is that was one of the rare times a “natural” conversation led me right to the doorstep of a trick. Sometimes a subject will come up that will get me 60% of the way there, but I really need to give it a significant nudge to transition into a trick smoothly.
This is why I say it’s so important to let people know you’re interested in magic or “strange phenomena” or psychological quirks or long-lost rituals or unusual games. (Or all these things, as I do.) This way you don’t have to wait around for decades for an appropriate subject to come up “naturally” in conversation. You will have your “natural” opening to get into a trick when someone asks you what you’re looking into these days or when they recount a previous trick you showed them. There was certainly a time where I thought it would be cool if no one knew I did magic and I just sprung these experiences on them out of the blue when certain subjects came up, but that’s not really a viable way to perform if you’d like to perform frequently.
There’s definitely a stigma that comes with saying, “I like magic!!” So I can understand why you might want to avoid saying it that baldly. But it’s worth it to come up with some way you’re comfortable saying it in order to allow other people to open the door for more frequent performance opportunities.
Does anyone have the full-length porn this clip is from? This is all I can find online. This is right in my wheelhouse pornographically. But it’s too short and inexplicit for me to…finish…to. Thanks for any help you can provide.