Collin Scangarella is a liar.

Collin Scangarella is a liar. He says he met the man in the bunny mask but this claim reeks of deceptive omission. To understand why Collin Scangarella is a liar you must understand who this man in the bunny mask was. The man in the bunny mask was a man on a mission. He'd sneak up behind your everyday and crush your soul. He'd do this in order to mend your spirit. A Santa Claus who's gift to modern man was sanity. But the man in the bunny mask was not a jolly fat man from the North Pole. The man in the bunny mask was a madman. Hence the bunny mask. And his trick was that he'd discovered the secret of the universe. Hence the madness.

Armed with his secret, the man in the bunny mask sought to fix us. Silently, beautifully, worming his way through our psyche, he'd poke pinholes in the veil shielding us from the truth so that we might glimpse at truth eclipsing lies; so that we might see this without it burning our eyes.

Collin Scangarella saw this and demanded that the man in the bunny mask surrender the secret that allowed him to fix what is broken in man. But the man in the bunny mask would not divulge his secret. "One cannot know the secret without sharing in its madness. Such madness is contagious... One carrier is dangerous enough!" the man in the bunny mask would plead. But Collin Scangarella was not satisfied with these reasoned ravings of a madman. He hungered for the secret and, realizing that the man in the bunny mask would die before infecting another with his madness, he cleaved open the head of the man in the bunny mask and picked apart its twisted synapses, searching for the secret of the universe.

So you see, the truth is that Collin Scangarella killed the man in the bunny mask. And this album is the record of his dastardly autopsy.

http://theevolutionofboth.blogspot.com/

Confused Wandering (Towards Truth)

He'd wandered confusedly to this place. This time. "You must go forward; only forward." she'd said. He obeyed. Thou shalt not fuck with the powers that be, yes? Regardless of how much delight they take in fucking with you. Not to mention that this shit was confusing enough as it was.

He'd found them here. The Truthtellers. His senses filled with their unintelligible noise. He recalled a large book in a very important looking library that stated that there were seven of them. He'd also seen a grafittied wall in a dirty winding road off La Rambla in Barcelona where some punk had drawn a scene with The Truthtellers on a stage, decked out in bling and throwing down on mics; five of them in all.

He figured the graffiti was more likely to get the number right but, really, he expected both sources to be wrong. So he counted. Counting eight in all, he adjusted for his having counted and came to thirteen. Joy surged through the ether as the universe celebrated the injection of new truth. He felt this and dared not confirm his final figure, for fear of killing the new Truthtellers. Killing Truthtellers seriously pissed off the powers that be.

Getting Better: The Shrill Cacophony

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon. Shine on you crazy diamond.
-Pink Floyd


Making his way to the kitchen App caught sight of Dio working on her paintings. She'd usually be asleep at this hour but, by the look of the transformation of what had been a blank canvass last night, she'd been painting all night. Oblivious to his presence, she was putting the final touches on the eyes of a desperately sad Daedalus, cradling on his knees the head of his drowned son. His beloved Icarus. The utter despondency on that face filled his mind with empathetic sorrow and a sense of admiration of Dio for being able to instill such emotion into her images.

Though you'd never see it painted on her face, despondency was a feeling she must know intimately. The easiness with which smiles came to her face jarred with the desperate sadness she now imbued onto her canvass. He wondered which one was real: the cheer she so naturally evoked or the solitude he imagined she must feel. Looking into the wounded eyes of Daedalus, he could not help but want to reach out to her, to tell her it was over, that she was going to be fine now - everything was going to be fine. Still, he couldn't help but wonder: Did the art have to contain the artist? Perhaps the sadness he often saw behind her smiles was merely him seeing what he expected to see. Could it be that he was doing her a terrible injustice? That she was unable to escape her past because of steel bars put there by his expectations?

How would a hunter know if the very act of hunting created his prey?

Softly inching forward, so as to remain unnoticed, App noticed something in the painting he hadn't seen before. The drowned face of Icarus featured the barest hint of a smile, but nonetheless unmistakably a smile. But... why? Curiosity getting the best of him, he spoke up "Why is Icarus smiling? He just fell to his death."

Dio didn't flinch, clearly having been aware of his presence from the beginning, "He lived the dream." Hearing this, App was driven to interject "No he didn't, he tried to live the dream. He was this close to freedom and he fucked up. Flew too high, had his wings melted. He killed his dream." "No, he killed his father's dream. Flying low they they were headed for safety, not freedom. Icarus reached for the sky." "And it burned him." App replied. Dio paused, as people giving careful consideration to their next words often do. "Well, I'd say it burned Daedalus more. Icarus reached for the sky, and it destroyed him. We hear the story from the perspective of Daedalus, lost in grief after losing a son. The lesson we're told we're supposed to pull from the story is 'Don't fly too high'. After all, keeping to that would have saved Icarus, right? But what of Icarus? Who's to say he had no regrets? That he came closer to the radiance of the sun than any other... and thought of his fall as just payment? My sadness isn't for Icarus. I've been told to be sad for him, but I wont. I won't because I won't let myself see him as a fool. I'm sad for Daedalus. I'm sad that he doesn't understand... and I hope, I hope so desperately, that one day he will."

"The Surreal Boom of the Budokan Stadium"

The sun had fought a fierce struggle that day but now lay deceased and conquered.
There were madmen everywhere. This was a time of celebration. "Rejoice! The sun lies dead!" the madmen sang and shouted. Underneath their feet, the grass shimmered with tears of dew. One of the madmen approached and said to me "You know how they say that you can't truly be mad if you know yourself to be mad? That is not true. That is NOT true. Madness... Madness is knowing you're mad and not wanting to have it any other way." Mulling his words, I could help but point out: "But that's circular..." Alas, the madman was mad, and had already wandered off, suddenly preoccupied with devising way to shoot fire into the sky. "Rejoice! The sun lies dead! And what better blasphemy than to make our own sun?"

Onstage, the madmen's priests preached their gospel. The guitarist painted the sky with bright blues and reds, the bassist denied the existence of contradictions, and the singer spoke of blindmen in the new dark. Those who before we had thought crippled would now become shepherds. The blindmen who had long navigated the seas of dark had been busy making maps. Making maps for those of us who would later come. For those of us who still played in the sun's playpen. Those of us who had not yet seen that the playpen was a prison.

The Game

Biggs: Don't any of you get it? The Game isn't about politics or money. The Game is about the subversion of our senses. Rational thought is only as good as the data it feeds on. Control our experiences, our language, and our assumptions and you've got us by the balls. The Game is about who gets to decide what you can see and not see. The Game is about who gets to define what words mean. Its about being imprisoned behind bars you cannot see. Unknown unknowns, motherfuckers!

Sonny: Alright asshole, if that's The Game then who the hell is running it? Some omniscient wacko in an underground lair with the power over words? What kind of bullshit is that?

Biggs: Aliens, motherfucker. Aliens.

Sonny: See this is the kind of shit that pisses me off about assholes like you. You got the world being ruled by flesh and blood motherfuckers right in front of your eyes and all you think to do is talk about fucking aliens. That's what makes everybody roll their eyes at us when we talk about The Game in public. Assholes like this one right here.

Let me give you a lesson about the fucking Game. The Game is about ordinary human beings controlling other ordinary human beings. The Game is about a small number of corporations controlling all the major players in the world media. The Game is about money and power and propaganda and all the other bullshit that people in power have been using to stay in power since the fucking pharaohs. Society is being played like a puppet by the assholes in five thousand dollar suits. They control the governments, the major corporations, and the media. Public opinion dances to the strings of these assholes and war is just another tool in their kit.

Less: Oh come off it. There is no fucking Game. The world is too complicated a place for your horseshit conspiracy theories. Sure there’s pricks out there with more power than most and I bet there are dudes out there that really do think they’re running ‘The Game’, but at the end of the day they’re just dumbfucks like -

[Loud banging noises. Authoritative voice is heard, demanding entry]

Less: What the hell?

Biggs: Meeting's over boys; everybody out!

The Machine

Dio glanced at the faces around him, wondering what world these people were leading him into. "So you're telling me that they're perfectly aware of our activities?" "Of course. They're not bullheaded. They've understood for a while now that the stronger you hold sand in a fist, the more grains slip through your fingers." he heard the transient say, his synthetic voice perfectly adjusted to appear to be coming from the location of his equally illusory body. "Call it confidence in their control. Actively squashing any and all subversion only breeds more subversion. Instead they’re comfortable laying back and letting us run amok; confident that we don’t pose a threat.”

Overlayed onto Dio’s vision as a part of the local consensus reality, Prom’teo’s figure seemed to look straight at him. Still, Dio understood that if Prom’teo was looking at him at all it would be through one of surveillance bugs that were pervasive throughout the Ark.

“Do you know why they’re confident of that, Dio?”

Dio frowned, understanding full well that the question was a test meant to ascertain whether he was worth the transient's attention. It bothered Dio. Language was such a fickle thing. That idea that you could size up an individual’s mind through mere conversation seemed oddly backward, coming from a transient. Maybe the sad truth was that there really was no better way to communicate with a hunk of flesh and blood... To size up a hunk of flesh and blood. But attention was currency to transients. Swimming through seas of fiber, a limited attention span was all that prevented them from becoming veritable gods. Talking to a human being meant slowing down their consciousness to a crawl. While a purely synthetic consciousness would have no problem keeping one stream of thought operating at nanosecond speeds and another at the comparatively sluggish pace of a human conversation, the transients' blend of biology and tech was not quite so dexterous with its multitasking. Still, networks were human artifacts. The Ark's synthetic cyber-police did not even begin to threaten the transients' parasitic infestation of their net.

Dio looked up, reflexively looking into the image of the transient’s eyes, “They’re confident that we pose no threat because we don’t pose a threat.” Prom’theo smiled. Bingo. “That’s right kid. The machine is strong. Make no mistake, the glass ceiling of this world is merely to unfuck your head.”