This morning I woke up early, got up and watched TV for a while.  I saw a night eruption of a volcano in southern Chile.  I heard about Governor Scott Walker's ambition to transform Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources into a privatized free for all.  Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State, didn't have a government e-mail account, but a private one, making her unaccountable regarding possible nefarious dealings with the Penguin, Joker, Riddler, and Catwoman.
     Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu has arrived in the United States, fulfilling his part in sticking it to the Obama Administration, since the President wasn't informed of the bilious Israeli top dog's upcoming speech before Congress until after John Boehner extended the invitation. 
     These events have nothing to do with each other.  I may as well have watched a Syfy Channel movie about lycanthropes intermingled with displays of "fabulous" earrings on QVC and chefs speeding through the makings of dishes prepared for snide judges on the Food Network.  Nothing to do with each other, or do they? 
     TV is a cut-up.  Whether you've heard of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin or not, you've seen the results of their groundbreaking experiments with juxtaposition.  It was in Paris in 1959, I think, that the artist and writer Brion Gysin cut through canvas to the newspapers below.  Strips of newsprint struck his eye as something to arrange in various non-linear ways.  He produced nonsensical sentences, found the result funny, and went to his friend Burroughs' apartment in the same building.  Burroughs didn't laugh, but said, "I think you've got something here, Brion." 
     William S. Burroughs, author already of the famous Naked Lunch, wrote several novels thereafter using the cut-up method.  He regarded the technique as a way of breaking open traditional mindsets.  His exploration of this strange revelation blew apart typical ways of thinking about reality, a kind of quantum physics revolution in prose. 
     Now, the jagged mingling of so many different ideas, archetypes, images, on television, on the internet, have formed a conglomeration of information hodgepodge, where a volcanic eruption sits side by side with Hillary Clinton mouthing hellos to an adoring audience.
    
                                                                         Vic Neptune