Let's think about Byron the Bulb

[Bryan Snyder]

Also - back to the Centennial Bulb link that Erik posted...

That bulb was noticed in 1972 and an article was published weeks later.

Make one wonder if OBA was inspired by this... Of course I think that the
bulb is still stewed over by big-wigs at GE.

B


On 5/10/08 10:14 AM, "robinlandseadel at comcast.net"
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> Of course, what was Pynchon doing in Watts in 1966, anyway?
> 
>      Owsley moved to Los Angeles to pursue the production of
>      LSD. He used his Berkeley lab proceeds to buy 800 grams
>      of lysergic monohydrate, the basis for LSD. His first shipment
>      arrived on March 30, 1965. He produced 300,000 capsules
>      (270 micrograms each) of LSD by May 1965 and then returned
>      to the Bay Area.
> 
>      In September 1965, Owsley became the primary LSD supplier
>      to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters; by this point Sandoz
>      LSD was hard to come by and "Owsley Acid" had become the
>      new standard. He was featured (most prominently his
>      freak-out at the Muir Beach Acid Test in November 1965) in
>      The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a book detailing the history
>      of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters by Tom Wolfe.
> 
>      Owsley attended the Watts Acid Test on February 12, 1966 with
>      his new apprentice Tim Scully and provided the LSD. Owsley met
>      the members of the Grateful Dead in 1966 and began working
>      with them (and financing them) as a sound man. Along with
> 
>                                        Bob Thomas,
> 
> Parenthetical note here: Bob Thomas was the first music director of the
> Renaissance Faire. I'd run into him from time to time. The Owsley crew
> set up and around the Muhalla's [sp?] Coffee House, lotta them
> ex-pat dealers runnin' 'round the Faire back then. We continue. . . ..
> 
>      he designed the Lightning Bolt Skull Logo, often referred to by
>      fans as "Steal Your Face" or SYF (after the name of the 1976
>      Grateful Dead album featuring only the lightning bolt skull on
>      the cover, although the symbol predates the namesake album
>      by eight years). During this time he made numerous live
>      recordings of the Dead and other leading San Francisco acts,
>      including Jefferson Airplane, Old and In The Way, and Janis Joplin.
> 
>      Owsley and Scully built electronic equipment for the Grateful Dead
>      until late spring 1966. At this point Owsley rented a house in Point
>      Richmond, California, and Owsley, Scully, and Melissa Cargill
>      (Owsley's girlfriend who was a skilled chemist) set up a lab in the
>      basement. Owsley developed a method of LSD synthesis which
>      left the LSD 99.9% free of impurities. The Point Richmond lab
>      turned out over 300,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of LSD
>      they dubbed "White Lightning." LSD became illegal in California on
>      October 6, 1966, and Scully wanted to set up a new lab in Denver,
>      Colorado.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley
> 
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
>>              Jill:
>>              I'm still not sure I get the preterition thing.
>>              I can honestly say that's one huge Pynchon
>>              element that escapes my grasp or lies just
>>              outside of it.. as soon as I think I "get it" I
>>              admit I really do not get it.
>> 
>> Teacher! Teacher! I get it, always did. All you have
>> to do to understand "preterite" and "preterition" in
>> Pynchon is to understand the "Elect". The Elect is a
>> Calvinist concept [dem W.A.S.P.s agin], this seems
>> to be a variation on "The Chosen People". The preterite
>> are all the rest. Also, preterite is a condition of being in
>> or of the past tense. Of course, that condition of being
>> in or of the past points to older, perhaps discarded, ways
>> of living and belief systems.
>> 
>> http://tinyurl.com/5cbdeh
>> 
>> Having spent a fair amount of time in Watts right after
>> the "Insurrection" [1965], I find "A Journey Into The Mind
>> of Watts" very much to the point, particularly illuminating
>> as regards Mason & Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49.
>> 
>> http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/watts.html