Now and then people have asked me "Whatever happened to Jim Rose."

Imagine the future of Las Vegas:

Here are a couple of buildings that I would have liked to put in Weird Las Vegas and Nevada, except they only exist in the imaginary future, and may never come to fruition.

The first is the somewhat possible Arthure C. Clarke Center for Imagination.

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Note the Monolith in from of the building. This building is supposed to be build on or near the UNLV campus. One news report explained the idea behind this imaganary building thusly

"One half of their structure is a cranial shaped dome. Novak envisions the material for this creative, right side, of the structure to be made out of liquid crystal and sandwiched between two layers of glass. With a robust tree behind it, the half of the facility would have adequate shading.

The left side of the structure represents a more analytical and scientific inspiration, using traditional lines and right angles."

for more info go to http://www.clarkefoundation.org/center/award.php or google "Arthur C Clarke Center for Imagination"."

Less likely to be landing in the Nevada desert is the Desert Space Station Museum, proposed to be built in Amargosa Junction near a brothel.

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The most info about this is the very optimistic web site for Nevada Joe's, a gas station and convince store that shares space with above mentioned brothel.

"The Nevada Science and Technology Corridor------a rural land mass covering parts of three southern Nevada counties: Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln. The corridor will establish a true, 21st century telecommunication network which will be the basis for the giant technology park's attracting new age, cutting-edge companies. Anchoring the Corridor will be the Desert Space Station Museum. The museum will feature hands-on science exhibits and experiments along with historic items from science achievements over the past half-century. There'll also be a planetarium, theater and, scheduled lectures from noted men and women in the space science fields."

http://www.nevadajoes.com/

One of the developers was even more optimistic, according to a Vegas newspaper: "Close by is Gate 510 to the Nevada Test Site. Planners say the learning center could prosper if the test site finds a thriving future as a solar energy mecca or a commercial spaceport. It could serve as a gateway to the testing grounds, coordinating exhibits with the real thing a bus trip away."

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/1999/Jul-15-Thu-1999/news/11562813.html

But this all seems unlikely. There seems to be little activity or any kind after announcement of the museum in 1999.

But there is always hope for the future.

TK

I first encounted Robert Anton Wilson's writing in a comic book that I bought the supermarket in my home town of Pullman, WA. The year was 1978 and I was 14 years old. The comic was Marvel Preview #13 UFO Connection. Marvel Preview had no continuing stories; it was always a one shot, testing to see if a concept had what it took to get its own comic. #13 was devoted to UFOs, no doubt riding on the popularity of Speildberg's Close Encounters. I don't remember much about the comic, but I will always remember one of the articles, an excerpt from a book called Cosmic Trigger, by an author I had never heard of, a guy named Robert Anton Wilson.
 There, in that short excerpt, were all the things I had been fascinated by and reading about, plus strange new things, some I had never heard of, some I had only had hints at.
 I had an interest in UFOs, psychic phenomena, Fortean phenomena, conspiracy in the JFK assassination. I had heard things about Aleister Crowley but did not really know what he was about. I had never heard of the Illuminati or the Discordian Society before. I would read that article again and again. I was amazed when it said that, not only was this just an excerpt from a larger work, but that larger work was itself a commentary on a 3 volume satirical novel that had been published perviously.
 A mass-market paperback edition of Cosmic Trigger showed up at the same grocery store that I had bought the comic at. I managed to track down the Illuminatus books at The Paperback Exchange at the neighboring town of Moscow, ID.
 Over the years I would find more of his books. One thing that I had heard is that the Principia Discordia, oft meaned in Wilson's tomes, was still in print, and published by a company with the unlikely name of Loompanics Unlimited. I found this while perusing another of my interests, manuals telling you how to do things that you are not supposed to do. I first came across these type of books from a company called Paladin Press, which was a very right wing, soldier of fortune style publisher.
 When I got a hold of Loompanics catalogue, it was something altogether different, they had many of the some type of manuals as Paladin had, but weirder, out there stuff as well. They had a section one unpopular ideas and heresy. They had a section one self-reliance, and they had a section on mind expansion. In that section were the books of RAWilson, Timothy Leary, the Principia Discordia. Loompanics, it turned out, was from the weirdo end of the Libertarian political movement, and advocated total freedom of thought. I had already aligned myself with Libertarian politics after see some of its advocates on the Tom Snyder show.
 I moved to Seattle in the early 1980s, and eventually ended up moving in with a collage student who was also a RAW fan.
 While living with him I started my fanzine. I had been subscribing to some weird self-published magazines devoted to things like the hollow earth and Richard Shaver. I had been getting strange info through the mail for years, and been collecting and filing strange news clippings. I figured if I assembled and wrote about what I had been collecting for all these years, I could trade my 'zine for others that were out there. My sole motivation was getting more weird info.
 My idea was that a lot of the stuff I was collection was considered to far-out, even to people who were researching weird stuff to begin with. I thought of different names for the 'zine, but ended up with the slightly clunky Off The Deep End.
 I had considered calling it The Journal of the Warren Belch Society. The fictitious Belch Society was from Wilson's SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT TRILOGY. Here is how he described it:
"The Warren Belch Society had been founded after Cotex had been kicked out of the Fortean Society for having bizarre notions. The purpose of "the Belchers" (as Cotex jovially called them) was to investigate those aspects of scientific theory and those alleged occult events which were regarded as "too far out" by the unimaginative Forteans, who are willing to investigate UFOs, rains of crabs and fish, girls who might have turned into swans, and similar matters, but, like their founder, the late Charles Fort, drew the line at the dogs that said "Good morning" and then vanished in a puff of green smoke."
 I put the first issue together with my roommates computer and dot-matrix printer and a lot of photocopying and paste ups. I took it down to the nearby Kinkos, where I had befriended people who worked on the graveyard shift. I ran it off and sent it out to some friends and left a few at some local coffee shops. I had created the worlds first punk-rock/fortean/conspiracy fanzine, although I did not know it at the time.
 Eventually a friend, who was into making and trading experimental music, gave me a copy of Factsheet Five, a zine that reviewed other 'zines. I was amazed that there were so many 'zines out there. I sent a copy of OTDE to Factsheet 5 for review, and sent mine out for trade to zines I saw reviewed. I was amazed that Kerry Thornely, who had co-founded Discordianism, was still active and accessible.
 I had gotten in on the beginning of the 'zine revolution. Mass availability of computers, word processing programs, and photocopy machines had created an underground network of weirdos that would not be matched until the mass availability of the Internet, years later.
 I formed the Tao Jones Cabal, a Libertarian leaning Discordian group, and made Off The Deep End it's journal. When a Communist group tried to co-opt the local punk rockers, I put up parodies their posters, printed in their same style, all over town. Yes, I was the one who put up the "Youth Decadence Campaign" Posters. Operation Mindfuck was in full effect!
 I organized a Discordian hit-squad against the local chapter of the Church of the Sub-Genius, made a truce with its founder Tom Prince (of pieces), and soon was publishing Discordian screeds in his fanzine, Threadbare.
Maybe it was when I was doing one of my guerilla poster runs that I saw a poster that said Robert Anton Wilson was going to be doing a lecture in town. I called up the number on the poster, just to get more information it, and ended up talking for hours. The couple who were bringing RAW to town, Rob and Kathy, invited me to help with the lecture. And this is how I first met Wilson in the flesh. I met him the day before the lecture, at Rob and Kathy's house, where he was staying the night.
 At the lecture I set up a book table and sold not only my fanzine, but also other weirdo RAWesque books, so Wilson's lecture was my first foray into book dealing, something that I still dabble in. On a more interesting note, I was also selling, at this same table, something that a friend of mine named Mushroom John had hooked me up with; a drug called MDMA, or ADAM, which was not then illegal. MDMA would become known by the name XTC, and turn on a new generation, not to hedonistic rEvolution, as I had hoped, but what would become rave culture. (BTW, Wilson was the first person who told me about raves. He said something that there are kids in Europe who hold parties in the middle of nowhere that go one for days). So this was also my first foray into drug dealing, something I no longer dabble in.
 Rob and Kathy brought Wilson back to Seattle at least one more time. I had convinced, or thought that I had, the Seattle weekly entertainment paper The Rocket, to let me do an interview with Wilson. When I turned it in, they rejected it, saying it wasn't really what they were looking for. I guess they didn't 'get it.' I ended up printing the interview, in 2 parts, in OTDE.
 I organized Seattle's first 'zine convention. I contacted all the local 'zines listed in Factsheet Five, plus others I had collect around town. I rented a hall and contacted the media. I even contacted the people at Loompanics, who had moved to nearby Port Townsend. I was pleasantly surprised when they showed up. I really hit it off with Mike Hoy, Loompanics owner. This was also my first meeting with Ashleigh Talbot AKA, "Triangle Slash," with whom I would collaborate with many projects in the future.
 In 1987, the Libertarian Party Presidential Nominating Convention was held in Seattle. I talked myself into helping run the Loompanics book table, although they probably could have gotten along without my help. This was a weird collection of characters. The candidates were Ron Paul, a doctor and Congressman from Texas, Indian activist Russell Means and a guy who looked like and acted like Foster Brooks. Loompanics had brought Lou Rollins a humorist, libertarian and holocaust revisionist, who worked for them as a proofreader, and one of their authors named Bob Black, an authority on anti-authoritarianism. (Years later Black would have a very public row with another Loompanics author, and friend of mine, Jim Hogshire.)  Guys in suits were rubbing elbows with guys who lived in the woods and had not seen TV, or heard a radio, in years. Dr. Demento was one of the scheduled speakers and so was Robert Anton Wilson. I managed to talk to Wilson when he was hanging out in a lobby area where I told him that I had a copy of the Lyndon LaRouche newspaper that accused him of being part of the Illuminati. He said he would love to see it. That night I found it and brought it to him the next day. It was a thrill for me to give Wilson a news article that refereed to him as an "Illuminoid."
 That was the last time I saw Wilson in person.
 I went on with my fanzine for many years. I became a Minerval in the Kallisti Camp of the OTO. My interest in Crowley had been started by Wilson, and obviously, the people who started Kallisti Camp were influenced by him as well.
Most of you know that in the early 90s, another interest of mine, strange performance and sideshow, came to the front of my life. I became a member of a modern-day rock and roll sideshow that toured all over the US, and parts of the world. As we toured, I got to meet, in person, people who I had been corresponding with for years. I met Kerry Thornley in the Little Five Points distinct of Atlanta when I was on tour with the Lollapalooza Festival. A photo I took of Kerry there shows up in Adam Gorightly's biography of Thornley, The Prankster and the Conspiracy.
 I continued doing my fanzine as I toured, now being able to interview people I met in my travels and do research in libraries all over the world. When I quite the show, and started doing my own show, everything else went to the back burner. I put all my energy into building my show and defending myself against attacks from my ex-employer, now adversary, and working on the books Circus of The Scars, with Jan Gregor. And as I was doing all this, the Internet was taking the place of the fanzine
 I was reading less and less, now and then I would hear things like Wilson was doing lectures Richard Bandler, co-compiler of NLP, something else I had gotten interested in, and independently of Wilson.
 Now that news of Wilson's death has reached me, I am not saddened. And I read that Wilson himself has asked us not to grieve for him. His last blog posting was "PLEASE EM absurd.?< seems It seriously. death take to how see don?t I levity, my pardon>
I remember when my friend Jim Keith died; it was such a shock. Our mutual friend George Pickard made a posting that they were going to have a traditional Irish wake for Keith; which is about celebrating the persons life rather than grieving their death.
 I kept this in mind when I found out that an old girlfriend had died in a car accident. I kept wanting to be sad but I kept remembering all the wonderful times we had together, so I couldn't be.
 One thing I remember about Wilson, going to back when I was a teenager, if I was feeling really depressed, no matter now deeply, all I had to do was read one of his books and I was in a good mood. It was one of the few things that could get me out of really foul mood. Wilson taught me not to take things to seriously. He cured (NLP word ambiguity alert) my paranoia, by showing it was OK to have fun with it. I think now of how simple a life Wilson lived, yet how many peoples lives he changed in a positive way. Thinking about connections to my life brings back many memories that have been dormant, all of them strange and happy. So I must heading down to Santa Cruz, a town with many odd connections to my life, for his big send off. I am sure I will see many old friends there, and it will lead to many new adventures.