paranoia; conspiracy; menippean; McLuhan; Matrix

[pynchonoid]

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/matrix.html

[...] But, this film has almost nothing to do with any
of those things. Halfway through, I realized it was
all about Bob Dobbs. Not J.R. Bob Dobbs; the real Bob
Dobbs. The real Bob Dobbs has nothing to do with the
Church of the SubGenius, was never assassinated in San
Francisco, and doesn't even smoke a pipe. He is the
guiding intelligence behind two quirky CDs entitled
Bob's Media Ecology and Bob's Media Ecology2 (which
features the music of Negativland, Coldcut and
Steinski), a radio play entitled Who's Forgotten Furry
Lint? (a Bob Marshall production), and the author of
Phatic Communion With Bob Dobbs. (Perfect Pitch
Editions, 1992) 

Bob Dobbs is an expert on communications theory and
was a colleague of Marshall McLuhan at the Center for
Culture and Technology in Toronto, Ontario. For
several years during the mid-'80s he was the personal
advisor to investigative journalist Bob Marshall, who
hosted a radio show on CKLN-FM called the
International Connection. The show regularly featured
the information of groundbreaking conspiracy theorists
such as Mae Brussell, Sherman Skolnick, Dr. Peter
Beter, and Lyndon LaRouche's Executive Intelligence
Review. Adam Vaughan, the manager of the station,
fired Marshall early in 1987 for broadcasting Dr.
Beter's "antiSemitic rants" against the Rothschilds.
The fact that Beter railed against the Rockefellers
just as much as the Rothschilds apparently went right
over Vaughan's head. Dobbs later replaced Marshall on
the air, and has since followed a rather interesting
career trajectory. According to him, he's taken over
the Earth. 

Dobbs is a brilliant but eccentric fellow who claims
to be the leader of "The Secret Council of Ten," a
shadowy cabal that controls the world using
complicated techniques known as
"synchronistic-linguistics" and "tetrad management."
As far as I know, the latter term was first developed
by Marshall McLuhan and his son Eric in their 1988
book Laws of Media: The New Science. The tetrad is a
four-step process that analyzes the projected
evolution of man-made artifacts; you might say it's a
means of predicting the future of humanity by
predicting the future of its technology. Dobbs claims
the NSA and other intelligence organizations utilize
the techniques outlined in Laws of Media to manage
world affairs. He also claims that he and his
colleagues are engaged in the same exact activities.
Thus, he refers to himself as "The Tetrad Manager." 

Though he looks no older than 35, he claims to have
been born on Feb. 2nd, 1922. When asked to explain
this incongruity he explains that a unique device
known as the D-Cell has enabled him to maintain the
veneer of youth even though he's really going on 78
years old. He also claims to be "the only artist alive
today." When asked to elaborate he replies that
everyone else in the world is really dead, therefore
he feels completely at ease with declaring himself
"the only artist alive today." According to Dobbs
everyone else disappeared in 1945, leaving behind a
world of "holeopathic retrievals." [...] 




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