“Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses, and staking everything on their vast and simple desires. Already the machinery had been set up by which the land of the great estates could be distributed among the peasants.” – John Reed’s “Ten Days that Shook the World”, 1922
That passage above is about as perfect a definition of Kickstarter that you will ever find. EVER.
We have TEN MORE DAYS in our campaign: that’s ten more days of illuminating Updates, ten more days for you to bring in your friends, your family, your frenemies, your dog (see Update # 5).
On this day, WE EXCEEDED 100 on our backer count and cleared the mid-slump, zombie-dread $20K barrier. As a thank you, we are giving you a little bit of history about…the zero.
Of all the numerals, “0”—alone in green on the roulette wheel—is most significant. Unique in representing absolute nothingness, its role as a placeholder gives our number system its power
Of course, there are many different meanings of caka, or caca. It is how you feel when your Kickstarter campaign fails. In other words, less than zero.
Did humans discover or invent numbers? There is a theory that numbers exist outside of the human mind, and unlike Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, or Chanel No. 5, they don’t require a human creator.
(Wow. Check out Beethoven’s hair! The man had testosterone in his eyebrows!)
And omg, the power of a zero in a perfume? Gazillions ($4200.00 for 30 oz! Not sold in a mall. Unless you’re in China.)
Check out the hair in the this one, and the dress:
Okay. Back to history. What gave numbers their power was the very act of naming them and writing them down.
Kind of like the contemporary equivalent of – writing a cheque! Or…
Early counting systems only saw the zero as a placeholder—not a number with its own unique value or properties. A full grasp of zero’s importance would not arrive until…crowdsourcing! Kickstarter!
Though humans have always understood the concept of nothing or having nothing, the concept of zero is relatively new — it only fully developed in the fifth century A.D. This was the century in which Rome was sacked by barbarians.
This happened because political parties were unwilling to compromise (sound familiar?) Beware the Ides of March:
Something, to deliberately show nothing – that is the odd irony at the heart of zero.
Many reviewers felt that about Bret Eastman Ellis’s nihilistic novel: “Less Than Zero.” From The New York Times: “This is one of the most disturbing novels I’ve read in a long time.” Reviewers said that about Barney Rosset’s authors too. Five went on to win The Nobel Prize for Literature. Barney was all about disturbance.
(That’s pre-Ironman Robert Downey playing a druggie member of the one percent. Spoiler alert: Ellis’s novel, dense with status branding, was ‘richer’ than the movie.)
Here are the zeros that torment us when our heads hit the pillow:
Here’s another instance of the power of zero: This You Tube video had over 20 million viewers (that’s a LOT of zeros.)
As we’ve been saying, all roads lead back to Barney Rosset and Grove Press. Without Barney’s fierce battles against censorship we wouldn’t be watching Chris Brown or reading Bret. Please add a zero to your pledge. Help us make our goal. Or at the very least, make a post on Facebook to visit this page.
And to give you the energy of your morning cup of coffee or your 6pm whiskey, here’s a clip from a book and a movie that wouldn’t be here except for Barney Rosset’s fierce (and successful) battles against censorship in America: