The Revolution Will Not Be Smellivised
In honor of the grand mutable cross which is peaking tomorrow, I was perusing and meditating on some Beatles remix YouTubes today. (The last time we had Uranus and Saturn opposite each other in Pisces-Virgo was in 1966 - the pivotal moment of the 60s when the zeitgeist morphed into the fully postmodern technicolor mindscape we know today, driven, in no small part by the Beatles. That year they realeased Revolver and did a U.S. tour ending in LA and San Francisco at the very pinnacle of the peak of the Uranus Pluto conjunction (in 66 it was the other way around, with Saturn in Pisces and Uranus and Pluto in Virgo.).
The Beatles cast a long shadow, especially in SoCal where I grew up. From what I can remember of the early 70s, they were dominated by the simple polarity represented by the legacy of Beatles inspired counterculture and the reaction to it symbolized by Nixon. Really. It was a world of veiled drug references and apocalyptic-political sentiment transmitted through amplified music over FM radio. Even as a toddler I was aware of the pervasive influence of hippie culture and even more pervasive resistance to it by parents, teachers, police, and politicians. The resistance was clearly fighting a losing battle. Uptight old people were not cool and everything that was relevant for the last 20 years had come exclusively from what was new and cool.
It wasn't until the end of the 70s, with the rise of punk and new wave counter-counter-culture that the cool capital of hippie aesthetics was exhausted (coinciding of course with the Uranus transit into Scorpio) and the mass-produced culture of revolution was challenged by a grittier, seemingly more anti-commercial, outsider perspective. At that time the youth culture fragmented, with the majority of suburban white kids turned off or ignorant of new, more independent/underground music, detached cool from it's association with progressive politics and attached themselves to the new Reagan-era complacency. Hippies, after all, tend to stink and clearly, they felt, drinking and fucking and polymer enhanced hair styles and were in need of a prolonged era of rediscovery.
In other news, I think there should be a word for the interval of anxious moments between the time any annoying new feature/popup/unwanted content manifests on your computer and the time you figure out how to turn it off. It's sort of a mandatory pop quiz IQ test with you against watever perpetrator of shitware has darkened your cyberdoor. It is generally accompanied by clenched jaws and squinty eyed determination. Sort of like removing a tick from your leg.
The Beatles cast a long shadow, especially in SoCal where I grew up. From what I can remember of the early 70s, they were dominated by the simple polarity represented by the legacy of Beatles inspired counterculture and the reaction to it symbolized by Nixon. Really. It was a world of veiled drug references and apocalyptic-political sentiment transmitted through amplified music over FM radio. Even as a toddler I was aware of the pervasive influence of hippie culture and even more pervasive resistance to it by parents, teachers, police, and politicians. The resistance was clearly fighting a losing battle. Uptight old people were not cool and everything that was relevant for the last 20 years had come exclusively from what was new and cool.
It wasn't until the end of the 70s, with the rise of punk and new wave counter-counter-culture that the cool capital of hippie aesthetics was exhausted (coinciding of course with the Uranus transit into Scorpio) and the mass-produced culture of revolution was challenged by a grittier, seemingly more anti-commercial, outsider perspective. At that time the youth culture fragmented, with the majority of suburban white kids turned off or ignorant of new, more independent/underground music, detached cool from it's association with progressive politics and attached themselves to the new Reagan-era complacency. Hippies, after all, tend to stink and clearly, they felt, drinking and fucking and polymer enhanced hair styles and were in need of a prolonged era of rediscovery.
In other news, I think there should be a word for the interval of anxious moments between the time any annoying new feature/popup/unwanted content manifests on your computer and the time you figure out how to turn it off. It's sort of a mandatory pop quiz IQ test with you against watever perpetrator of shitware has darkened your cyberdoor. It is generally accompanied by clenched jaws and squinty eyed determination. Sort of like removing a tick from your leg.