Having debunked the Shriners to my own satisfaction, I would like to move on to the larger question:  What is the nature of Free-Masonry generally? 

In venturing into this territory, I enter the august (or fallen) company of conspiracy theorists, esotericists, crackpots, addle-pates, schizophrenics, several popes, and every tin-foil-hatted wingnut this side of Lemuria.  What - I hear you asking (I am prone to auditory hallucinations) - What could possibly be left to say about the Free-Masons?  [And why do you keep spelling it like that?] 

It may appear that every speculative stone has long since been upturned - A. E. Waite even hypothesized once that the great secret of Free-Masonry is:  That there is no secret.  I can therefore forgive you for doubting my capacity for novelty.  (O, ye of little faith!)  But, as Jesus once said, dig this:

As with the Shriners, let us first review some salient data points.

1. The Free-Masons are an international, fraternal, (indeed, exclusively male) society of apparently British origin, with numerous prominent members.
2. They are a secret society, in the sense that they maintain secrey of some kind, and therefore may be assumed to secretly be keeping a secret or two, in secrecy.  Or perhaps they simply hope to protect the privacy of their more prominent members.
3. Sober sources (which are a bit dull) indicate that primary candidates for "the secret" would be identities of members, content of initiations, and recognition signals.
4. Masonry has a well-known history of developing ways for one Mason to identify himself to another.  Secret handshakes, gestures, postures, seemingly innocent phrases with covert meanings, and so on.  One might say that they are among the primary architects of the art of discreetly signalling one's intentions.  (I have commented on this before.) 
5. Masonry is documentably centuries old, and allegedly much older.  This is far and away more than enough time to take over the world, or end it, were they so inclined.  A simple look at any day's headlines shows the utter failure of anyone to actually run the entire world, and incidentally confirms its continued existence.  If they've been trying and failing all this time, they suck.
6. Political conspiracy having been ruled out, they still seem to have a need for secrecy, and especially for secretive means of mutual recognition, but apparently not because they are plotting anything.  They could be an intelligence service, I suppose, but that seems far-fetched for an international organization, besides which, if they were a branch of the British intelligence community, the presence of many Masons among the leaders of the American Revolution is rather perplexing. 
7. They seem like nice enough fellows, so various sorts of distateful vices like cannibalism, human or animal sacrifice, and so on, seem straight out. 
8. They insist that candidates affirm the unique Deity, and they are far too tied, historically, to Christianity to be plausible as a front for a cult.

So - with conspiracy, heresy, evil, and espionage ruled out, we seem to be left with victimless crime and ... sin?

Sin!  Why call it by the name given to it by its enemies?  Let us say, rather, in a fraternal spirit:
The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Who enjoys theatre, costuming, and a mythology consisting near-exclusively of male characters?  The Free-Masons.  Who has an impeccable sense of style?  The Free-Masons.  Who virtually invented hanky codes?  The Free-Masons.  Who knows how to let you know that they know without letting your wife know in the process?  Well, you know.  And finally - who spends all their free time hanging out in the exclusive company of other men?  The devotees of brotherly love, that's who. 

Not that there's anything wrong with that!  We understand, guys - it was a different time...  There was the Church to contend with, for one thing.  And there you were, a beseiged minority, with an especial need for each other's company, but mortal danger lurking at every step taken to determine who was your comrade, and who was just effete.  There you were, benign, but stigmatized - in constant fear of jail, loss of your jobs, disinheritance, shunning, and harassment of all kinds.  What else were you supposed to do?  And you can hardly break silence now, in that you would betray the trust of all those, past and present, who have joined in hopes of being protected by that very silence.  This is not a demand that you out yourselves.  Rather, consider this a friendly letter from the outside world, saying:  Well played!

It is true that certain holographically-arranged texts contain within them all possible interpretations, and so, in this sense, this theory, and all others past and yet to come, have already been aired, but have perhaps not yet been read.  There is nothing new under the sun, so I can't really claim too much originality here... but I will wager that you heard it here first.

(Well, there is Illuminatus! to consider.  Oh drat.)

[Because it is quaint and antique, ("antient", if you will) and because I can.]

Consider, if you will, the Shriners.  They have a reputation as amiable, charitable, middle-aged businessmen who nonetheless retain a certain impish frat-boy streak that comes out during their conventions.  They are, collectively, subsumed under the archetype of Someone's Dad - maybe not yours or mine, but someone's.

I wish to offer an alternative picture of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.  Here are some generally uncontroversial points:

1. They have a curious fascination with Middle-Eastern culture and aesthetics.
2. As members of a secret society, they presumably have at least one secret.
3. They are known to enjoy a tipple now and again - which is to say, they like to party.
4. They are often seen in parades, driving miniature cars, wearing fezzes and sashes, waving to passersby and grinning widely and amiably.
5. In general, they display a remarkable degree of easy-going good cheer.  They are happy-go-lucky men of goodwill.
   
6. Hashish has been widely available to Westerners, principally via Middle-Eastern trade routes, since the Nineteenth Century.
7. The Shrine was founded in 1870.  Around the same time, a similar group was founded, named the Mystic Order of Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm.  I am not making this up.
8. For fuck's sake, they wear fezzes in public while driving toy cars.

I submit that the Shriners are venerable heshers - vipers of the first fucking water.  They are manifestly and royally baked.

Check out this dude, then just try and tell me that I'm wrong.   Oh, and by the way, he's the "Imperial Potentate".  Other Shrine titles are at least as florid as that.  He is also a member of the Royal Order of Jesters.  Apparently "Dad" isn't so square after all!

DISCLAIMER:  If your religion is nothing like what I heap abuse on below, then obviously I am not talking about it... right?

Sometimes I have been asked to explain my aversion to Christianity, and to religion generally.  The short answer:  Because it hates the real, and loves the ideal.  To which I reply:  To Hell with Heaven!  Stay tuned for details.

Nietzsche found both the Socratic and Christian traditions to be dominated by the despisers of this world - regarding life, and this world, it is agreed - it is no good!  He and I agree in one thing, at least:  We have no quarrel with the world as it is.  For another view, you simply must consult Westboro Baptist Church's recent hit single, "God Hates the World".  Unfair as it may be for me to use this extreme (and widely condemned by the sincerely religious) example, I feel that it represents the logical terminus of the worst impulse - and an authentic one, I fear - of the dominant faiths of our time.  They set God, and the "Godly" person, at war against the World and the Flesh.  (It's called "Sin", kids.)  They are other-wordly, and perhaps Platonic.  This world does not live up to their human (all too human!) ideals - which are mostly puerile.  And so they hate it.  Which turns out to be rather a problem if this world is the only actual one!

I have no patience for it any more.  God's answer to Job makes more sense to me now than it did when I was in high school and first read it - I thought then that it was morally vacuous, and God was playing the part of a simple bully.  But now...

Who are you to judge the entire Universe?  Let us not forget that everything any of us has ever encountered - or loved -  was found right here, in this body, with its co-located mind, in the womb of this world.  Who are you to say that the life we are actually and verifiably living now is worth nothing but to prepare for another, "better" life, and that it is better to suffer here, and to supress our individual wills, and normal desires - or even our whims - if this prepares us to receive some ill-defined reward in some fantastical future state?   Oh, but the voice is not yours, it is the voice of God!  Well, as Ozzy Osbourne has observed, "I talked to God this morning, and He don't like you!" - and who's going to prove to me that the voice in your hero's head is real, but the voice in his is a delusion?  "But consider the risk you take, in that the afterlife is infinitely long!"  I am perfectly willing to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit right now, if it will free me from any appearance of having sold out to that bribe!  And should I die and find I was "wrong", I will gladly take a righteous shit on the doorstep of Heaven on my way down to Hell.

In accepting the world as it is, am I resigned to evil?  Not at all!  The world I love is the world as it was made.  Human institutions are ours to criticize, even to hate, and certainly to change or destroy.  And when matter is out of place (for example, food being distant from the hungry), it is well within our role here to move it.  I remain in favor of activity that improves the state of the world.  But finding fault with the arrangement of the world and its affairs is very far different from finding fault with its nature.

Perhaps it may appear that my position rests crucially on atheism.  In fact, it is totally independent of the question of God.  Let us suppose, then, that there is a God, of the usual sort.  If this God - perfect, wise, benevolent - made the world, then how could the world be wrong?  Or the body?  Or the human soul?  Creation is a theophany (appearance of God) according to any sane theology.  The reality of God would not diminish the force of Nietzsche's critique of the psychology of Christianity, for that matter.  If anything, his this-worldy healthy-mindedness and unconditional affirmation of the Lord's works is more compatible with there being a real God than the bizarre self-loathing and repulsive paranoia and negativity of Saint Paul.  (Am I enlisting Nietzsche as a Theodicy?  Why not?)

There are, of course, many other evils associated with religion - claims of exclusivity, immature understanding of morality, alienation of individual spirituality onto hierophants, links to political oppression, etc., ad nauseum.  Nonetheless, and perhaps surprisingly, I retain a high regard for Jesus, and for many individual participants in religions - as Hillel the Elder, Albert Schweitzer, al-Hallaj, Ghandhi, M. L. King, Jr., Johnny Appleseed, et al., whose greatness can not be separated from their piety.  Jesus said that a tree may be judged by its fruit, and theirs was ripe in season - but most of today's harvest is utterly spoilt.

In keeping with the spirit of paradox, I conclude by offering, in support of the religious side of my position, a quote from Nietzsche, and in support of the atheistic side of my position, a quote from God.  (As an aside - I currently enjoy thinking of N. as the South Park of his day.  "Well, I'm hip and all - I see what he's trying to do, and I appreciate the cutting-edge, transgressive humor as much as anyone, but, really, this time he's gone too far!"  N. is a philosopher for the young.   [Older people tend to be more conformist because they have endured many more years of operant conditioning driving and shaping their behavior!]  It's like deliberately farting in church - not so much because farting in church is funny, and not so much because it's something you're not supposed to do, but rather because the fact that it is What You Should Not Do is itself hilarious.)

About life, the wisest men of all ages have come to the same conclusion: it is no good.  Always and everywhere one has heard the same sound from their mouths — a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of resistance to life.  Even Socrates said, as he died: "To live — that means to be sick a long time: I owe Asclepius the Savior a rooster."  Even Socrates was tired of life.  What does that prove?  What does it demonstrate?  At one time, one would have said (and it has been said loud enough by our pessimists): "At least something must be true here!  The consensus of the sages must show us the truth."  Shall we still talk like that today?  May we?  "At least something must be sick here," we retort.  These wisest men of all ages — they should first be scrutinized closely.  Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? tottery? decadent? late?  Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a raven, attracted by a little whiff of carrion?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Götzen-Dämmerung - Twilight of the Idols, [ 1895 ] "The Problem of Socrates", Sec. 1

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,  Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?  Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.  Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Declare, if thou hast understanding.  Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth?  Declare if thou knowest it all.  Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or because the number of thy days is great?  Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?  Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south?  Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him?  He that reproveth God, let him answer it.  Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.  Wilt thou also disannul my judgment?  Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?  Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?  Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

Job 38:1-4,18,21;39:9,26;40:2,7-9,14

In which bragging is determined to be incompatible with pausing.

I was working on a computer at work, when a young employee of ours walked up to me and struck up a conversation, during which he began to brag of his 733+ haXing 51<1775.  He could devise a virus to fry you any way you wanted to be fried, he explained - though in plainer language.  I was suspicious, because of his youth (I am not terribly impressed with the 1337-itude of the current crop, most of whom don't even understand the arguably practical purposes for which "1337" was devised.), and because of his job description (in a word: "peon").  His demeanor didn't help much, and his explanation included "an' shit", or the equivalent.  But no snob I, and willing to give the benefit of the doubt, I remained open and accepting, and with apparent sincerity asked him a simple question:  "What do you code in?" 

"Uh, what do you mean?" 

"What programming languages do you use?" 

There was a significant pause, which told me all I needed to know, but as a final seal upon the verdict, he replied:

"Microsoft."

The moral is clear:  Do not seek to invoice for goods you are not prepared to ship.

The Great American Novel - is generally a road novel.

(Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, Naked Lunch, The History of Luminous Motion...)

We are away from home - we can long for it, but we can't go there.  Twain tries to return Huckleberry Finn to his hometown, but we are not Ulysses, and eveyone hates that ending, and marvels at Twain's moment of cowardice - which he partially redeems by promising that Huck will "light out for the territories".

We are away from home, and we can't go back.  We are not entirely familiar with our surroundings.  We are in a foreign land, all our lives, and we must improvise, or try to get by on charm and by being openly naive.  We are in motion.  We have to find the new home to replace the lost homeland.  The urge for home is never satisfied by a new home, though - it could only be assuaged, if that were even possible for us, by the original home. 

And so we keep moving.

I think people don't yet grasp the immensity of what is going on right now.  They think they do, but they are thinking small, because they are small.  Everything that has happened up until now was a prologue.  Right now, we are living through the beginning of history, not the end.

Let me make it more vivid:  Our proto-human ancestors developed fire, tools, weapons, and clothing.  As a result, we have language, leisure, and wealth, and are mostly hairless.  Later, we developed agriculture, and as a result we have religion and government.  We developed the wheel, and as a result we have begun to develop spaceflight.  We developed writing, which led to the development of individualism and democracy.

And then, for a while, nothing much happened.

Within the past two centuries, we have developed what may appear to be separate technologies, but which amount to a single shift:  power generation, telephony, recording and broadcast media, and electronics generally, all of these converging on a global (and increasingly wireless) network of millions of computers.

If banging two rocks togther to strike a spark into some dried grasses made us lose our fur; if poking a seed into the soil led to the total upheavel of our social life; if a rounded rock or two mounted on a pole led to rocketships - what, then, will an instantaneous global communications network and universally accessible repository of all knowledge do?

Our descendents will forget our wars and the ideologies that fueled them long before they forget our technology.

Our forebears did not know what they were doing for (or to) us; similarly, we have no way of knowing what we are doing to (or for) our descendents.  But precedent indicates that it will be - unprecedented.

Sometimes, it seems you wish to appeal to the values of ordinary decent hard-working people. 

I wish you would make up your mind.  You may speak of ordinary people or you may speak of decent people.  But these are two different groups.

Ordinary people supported the fascists and Nazis.  Ordinary people lynched blacks, beat up freedom riders, jailed civil rights leaders, terrorized the queer kids in high school, and voted for villains like Wallace and Bush.  Ordinary people hate science and love superstition.  Ordinary people love war; they are rabid nationalists.  Ordinary people stifle and beat their children.  Ordinary people can't drive for shit.  Ordinary people enforce conformity through force and employment - the threat of joblessness is financial blackmail that keeps people acting as "normally" as they are able, and starves those who can't or won't fake it straight to death.  Ordinary people overconsume and waste and render unclean.  Ordinary people are destroying the environment, and may cause the end of life on Earth (or at least vertebrate life).  Ordinary people, in short, are the main reason the world is unlivable, and Utopia unattainable.

Let's look at the KKK - some think of them as being like Stormtroopers, or perhaps reactionary guerrilla soldiers, or terrorists, or some-such.  But no - look into them, and you will see that they are ordinary, hard-working people who love their families and their country. 

Which is to say that they are monsters.

I recently found a copy of an email I sent to my loved one perhaps two years ago, with Subject: Today.  For whatever reason, it interests me, so I am posting it here in the hopes that it also does something for you.  "Campus" is a private college in whose offices I worked at the time (not teaching, sadly), and "Town" is the LA-area city in which it is located.  North Park is somewhere I grew up, and Balboa Park is the large urban park in whose nooks and crannies the benign heart of San Diego, (my hometown) beats.

[X],

It's very strange to me, but on the busride over here, and walking to campus I felt - different.  In a good way.  Free and clear, I think might give a notion of it.  Everything was very vivid and nice - walking through [Town] was like walking through North Park years ago, and walking across campus felt like walking through Balboa Park as a kid.  I felt like I remember feeling a very long time ago.  The concrete steps were eminently look-at-able, with the texture, the moisture, the moss... all very clear and present.  I feel, still, remarkably unburdened.  Not anxious, angry, exhausted.   "Ain't got no quarrels with God," as it were.  But not hyper-agitated like something drug-induced or forced.  No drama, no epiphanies, but also no problems to speak of.

It's weird, and I wonder - is this what it feels like to not be depressed?

Yours,
[Jeremiah Dissed]

[ FAIR WARNING:  There are some links to Encyclopedia Dramatica below.  If you are still capable of being shocked or offended at anything, or are naïve, and liable to click on links without considering first the possible consequences, don't go there.  Period.  And don't cry to me if you do. ]

If the level of noise in the media (old and new) is any indication, we apparently have a Problem.  Sometimes it's discussed as a problem with DRM, or with Intellectual Property, or with Piracy (Yaaar!), but, really, it's always the same problem, which is the increasingly weak connection between the distribution of creative work and compensation for its production.  Briefly:  Everyone loves art, but no-one is ponying up the $$$.  Which would be great, except it's not clear how anyone is supposed to produce the art, music, and writing in question without either (a) starving, or (b) having a trust fund.  And when we expand the discussion to things like software, it gets worse.  At bottom, anything that can be considered information is vulnerable to being redistributed or repurposed without being paid for, and everyone from the UN to [your favorite shitty band's name here] has their panties in a twist over it.

The deeper problem is that many involved seem to be pretending that the world hasn't changed recently, nor will it change soon.  Of course, the world is always changing.  And in the areas of production and distribution of information, we may as well have all moved to Mars, for all the good our old ideas are going to do us.  insisting that our expectations should determine our outcomes doesn't have much of an impact on the facts, who are notoriously cold dudes.

The solution can only begin after we admit the nature of our situation, and then react to it as it is, rather than as we would like to imagine it.  The typical attempts at solutions - iTunes, DRM, prosecution of end-users, attacks on sites like the Pirate Bay, suppression of tools and information which facilitate "piracy", and so on - are all basically attempts to live full-time in Disneyland.  People become embarassingly infantile when they try to preserve the world they understand in the face of the actual world as it stands, which does not care if they are comfortable. 

So, what is our actual situation?  Simply put: 

• If something can be rendered as electronically transmissable information, it already has been, or will be next week.
• Anything thus encoded has already been rendered copyable, unlocked, and unrestricted, or can be made so on demand.
• Anyone who wants it can get it.  Anonymous always delivers.
• Individuals vary in their handling of the ethical issues involved.  However, Anonymous doesn't give a shit.  What Anonymous wants, Anonymous takes.
• In short, intellectual property is impossible.
• No exceptions.

(To which should probably, for Tradition's sake, be added Rule 34:  There is porn of it.  No exceptions. )

Add to this that making art out of other art has been a major source of new aesthetic modes for perhaps a century now (collage, sampling, détournement, scratching, etc.), and the fact that such an approach is rational and proper when programming.  Repurposing others' work is a current project of our civilization, and stopping it is first of all futile, and furthermore the act of a philistine.

In short, "Intellectual Property" is collapsing, or, really, it's moot - and there is nothing to be done about it.  Let's take a look at the term itself.  "Intellectual" is clear enough - we're dealing with brain-children here.  Well, people have always had those.  What about "Property"?  Well... have people always had that?  I suppose, yes, in the sense of consumables, durable goods, and other stuff.  (They certainly did not, in terms of, say, land. )  But did the first person to tell a joke expect that it would never be repeated?  Did they demand that someone give them a fish every time their joke was used?  More likely, they just hoped to get invited over for drinks and roast mammoth more often, and perhaps to have a fractionally better chance at getting laid.  This tradition is carried out even now by the rock bass players of the world.

This will end up being far too long if I go through every art and every period of history, but think it through with me - what was a musician or an author or artist at each stage of history?  Or a mathematician or scientist or philosopher?  How did they eat?  What did they own?  What were the corresponding articles that could be owned?  Hint:  People hired musicians to play music, not to compose it.  People paid for books, or for manuscripts to be copied - the pay going to the printer, bookseller, scribe or scriptorium, not to the author.  To buy a painting, of course, you had to go the painter - that's because a painting is a thing.  But, while a book is a thing, a text, as embodied in a book, is not. 

Being a writer was never a job - it was a vocation, perhaps.  Or a hobby.  One participated in it because one was able to.  Privilege was one way in.  Working a day job was another.  (I'll cite the lens-grinder Spinoza as proof that the day job option really was there.)  The priesthood (a sort of combination of the previous two solutions) was another solution.  But the best solution was patronage.  If you were good, someone, hopefully, would notice; if not, you got a day job until someone did.  This worked because there was a corresponding a social pressure for the affluent to be, as the cliché goes, "patrons of the arts".  The artist got status from their work being read, heard, or viewed.  The patron got status for supporting the culture by supporting those who contributed to it, or advanced it.

Now, this is limiting - what wealthy baron is going to support an author who wants to call wealth and aristocracy into question?  And, of course, as society reorganized itself under new principles, new forms of production, and so on, new ways of creative production also emerged.  Capitalism has a lot to do with this, but so do things like new printing technologies, which allowed for newspapers and other media that needed content-on-demand with minimal turnaround time - which noöne is going to do if you don't pay them for it.  Or:  The professional writer as a job category emerged.  This is linked with the emergence of forms like the newspaper that did need to be paid for if one wanted the current version, andalso with the development of advertising - a still-relevant force on these here tubes.  Similar stories can be told about the impact of recording technology on music, and of other social changes on the sciences, for that matter.  This worked acceptably well for a while, until - now.  The Great Interwebs Monster has swept the commercial-industrial model of creative production clean off the table, I fear.

Capitalism misconstrues the things it wasn't designed to model.  (Witness what it has done to sex.)  Patents, R&D divisions, and so on emerged to support the kind of commercially-driven production of ideas that we associate with new inventions, medicines, etc.  But this is very different from creative work in the arts and letters, and shouldn't be - really, should never have been - the model for production in those areas.   

As I've been insisting, times have of course changed, and in many ways for the better.  The distance between creator and audience is quite small anymore - many bands now have fanbases in the low thousands, with whom they communicate directly through their websites.  It is something of a mark of pride among music geeks to champion bands that have more members than fans.  Nearly anyone can create and distribute music, art, or anything else online, probably not producing any durable media (books, CDs, etc.) on their own, and gathering such attention as they are able to gather.  The age of superstars may be ending, and the age of the niche already has begun.  It's been decades since bands started producing short runs of 7" vinyl singles - 500 copies used to be pretty standard, and I have the evidence in hand.  'Zines, and their current descendents on the web, tell the same story - if you produce something you believe in, and do so cheaply but sincerely, you will find a small, but equally sincere audience (many of whom will have their own creative projects) to share in the joy.  The future is in Microfame.

But...  Money?

My best guess at a solution to that problem is a return to the patronage system.  Nothing, of course, will stop a suitably motivated but un-patronized person from pursuing their art - getting paid to write is quite different from being driven to write and needing to eat.  For the unpopular but driven, day jobs remain available, and perhaps sleep gets lost, but the "starving artist" remains a viable personal myth. 

How could patronage work under these new conditions?  My thesis is that it already is working, and is simply taking time to be fully understood by everyone involved.

It is certainly possible (see SNOCAP) for the microfamous to impose on fans' goodwill to pay for recordings.  Radiohead's recent experiment in soliciting voluntary payment for their work may give us some indication of how well that approach works.  I suspect it will work just fine - except for the recording industry, who were, however, a bunch of greedy fucks who habitually ripped off artists anyway, so good riddance. 

Another possibility, which seems to have worked out prety well for webcomic author Jeph Jacques, is the Shwag Approach.  His strip, Questionable Content is, of course, free of charge, and, of course, partially suported by some modest advertising.  Somewhere along the line, he started drawing clever T-shirts on his characters, and his fans started asking if it were possible to buy them.  Not being an idiot, he started producing shirts, and now, if I am not mistaken, he works full-time on his strip and website, and supports the whole by working the schwag angle for all it's worth.  (They are, I should add, very nice shirts.)  Corresponding merch strategies no doubt work fairly well for bands, especially since wearing a pin, patch, or bumper sticker for a band noöne's ever heard of is quite the status booster in certain circles.  

Of course, bands can perform at shows, and writers can give readings, and so on, as people are always eager to point out, but this doesn't work out so well if you can't travel, are unwilling or unable to perform, or if you are producing, for example, sample-heavey electronic music that can't be "performed" inany meaningful sense. 

Others online have their own strategies - including the elegantly direct one of asking for money and gifts.  We could call this the Paypal and Wishlist Approach, and while it might require sometimes showing some skin, it is rumored to work.  A dollar each from 1,000 fans is just as spendable as a thousand dollars from a single patron.   It could work better, if the idea of such "distributed patronage" became more commonplace.  Like traditional patronage, this Micropatronage will work to the extent that there is a corresponding social value placed on being a patron.  Once everyone stops paying for music, movies, and (perhaps) books entirely, this may become more realistic, as the basic problem - how to keep our creative workers fed - will become more obviously a problem.  In the meanwhile, some amount of Merch may be in order.

Is all of this inadequate?  It doesn't matter if it is.  Our situation remains the same, regardless of whether we approve of it.  Information wants to be free, and Anonymous is willing to coöperate with it.  We must adapt or die.

I am not terribly interested in myself right now, so I would like to share with you some people in whom I am interested, as you should be, too, assuming you're not an utter tool.

It is little remembered in these dark days that America was once a nation of heroes.  You found them on every street corner.  Not all of them were born here, but they ended up here, and that's all it takes.  You arrive in America, and you are reviled as a repulsive tick-laden foreign parasite for a while, until, eventually, you start telling people to fuck themselves, at which point it is conceded that you are One of Us.  Since it was easy to die in passing over the oceans back then (the pterodons got many would-be immigrants) we were regularly infused with eugenically-enhanced blood.  Proof:

Brother Theodore, having survived his childhood, the Nazis (not a joke - he was a literal prison camp survivor), and his own overzealous spleen, arrived here (with the assistance of Albert Einstein) and commenced making people laugh while simultaneously making them subtly uneasy.   And he convinced them to pay him for this.  More information available from the goodfolk over at Technoccult.  N.B.:  Do not miss the linked YouTube goodness!  Here is a particularly succulent dithyramb against food.  Relevant quote:  "Evil that fails is evil; but evil that succeeds - is good!"

Tiny Tim had hair galore back when the Beatles were still in pompadours.  He would hang out on the streets playing 1920s novelty songs on ukelele and singing in an inimitable falsetto.  (Though he was, in fact, a baritone.)  Somehow, he became famous as a result, and his many records are still available, and quite revelatory.  Later he got married to the elusive "Miss Vicki" on the Tonight Show.  The scholarly consensus is that Tiny Tim was a full-blood Yeti, and punk as fuck.

Joshua Norton, self-appointed Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico persuaded the people of San Francisco to treat him as such.  The finest restaurants would feed him, and at more modest establishments, he would persuade them to let him include stray dogs in the proceedings - and all for no charge.  His proclamations were published in the newspapers, and the money he issued was accepted in trade.  Local gentry paid for his burial, monument, and funeral, and tens of thousands attended.  Emperor Norton rules your ass, and mine.  (He has also, it should be mentioned, attained beatitude in the Discordian faith tradition.)

Overall, I say unto you:  Fuck Superman, Moses, Jesus, and even Michael Jordan.  I know the inimitable indwelling light of the oversoul when I see it. 

Idolize with care!