SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ OCT 30, 2016

1. What do Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ken Russell's Altered States, Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void and the Mitchell Bros. 70's porno classic Behind the Green Door all have in common? They're all on this Taste of Cinema list of 25 Psychedelic Movies That Are Worth Your Time! And what qualifies the aforementioned flicks as "psychedelic", you ask? List compiler Esther Zelig is happy to explain, before launching into a description of Dali and Bunuel's seminal surrealist short film Un Chien Andalou, thusly:

Psychedelia in film is characterized by distortion (both in image and in sound), experimentation in narrative and editing, and sometimes drug-inspired hallucinations. Like the psychoactive drugs which produce heightened sensory perceptions and distortion, psychedelic films present to their audience an unfamiliar and/or dream-like view of reality. 

The following films use cinematography, narration, editing, sound design, and music to create worlds of distortion. Whether the film is depicting drug-induced madness or creating an atmosphere of existential confusion, these films somehow experiment with the audience’s sensory perceptions in order to uproot the viewer from reality. These films welcome (or in some cases, force) the audience to interact with a plethora of psychedelic imagery, sounds, and/or narration.

Despite a couple of nonsensical entries - Point Blank and Wake in Fright are both fine films, but can they really be called psychedelic? - this is an outstanding list, and makes a worthy guide for any budding cinemaphile in search of "the good stuff". And speaking of "the good stuff"...

Just look at that face!

2. It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I occasionally use it to promote my "real world" projects, as well as those of my friends and associates, if and when I deem them worthy. Like, for instance, with my ongoing attempts to break into the film world, usually by partnering with - or piggybacking onto - my oldest and best friend Marc Roussel. And that is why I was so pleased to see Marc getting some well deserved critical appreciation from the folks at BloodyWhisper.com, in the form of a career-spanning overview! Written by Ernie Fink and published this week, this virtual tongue bath of praise begins thusly:

There are many good things that come from Canada. This filmmaker may be one of the best. 

Based in Toronto, Mr. Roussel has a diverse resume of films to his credit. Although his strongest suit seems to be horror, his versatility has shown in both crime drama and romance. He has the ability to pull a variety of emotional strings is so effective that he cannot be matched by most. He is also downright terrifying.  

His films Remote and The Elusive Man have won awards at various festivals and he had been nominated for the Director’s Guild of Canada award. He has also found success as an editor on many televisions shows.

Adding to my pride at seeing my best bud be treated so well is the fact that I, myself, took part in the creation of many of Marc's most successful films, from our early contest entry Sweet Tooth, to our most recent BravoFACT project, The Last Halloween, and a few in between! Furthermore, it is my most sincere hope that the two of us get to do more work together, perhaps including some work that makes us some goddamn MONEY one of these days! Anyhoo, keep watching this space for developments. In the meantime: Marc, old pal o' mine, I join BloodyWhispers.com in saluting you!

3. Well, that was fast! Remember the second item from our previous DDD Suggested Reading List, wherein we informed you of the death of Jack Chick, creator of those ironically popular Chick Tract evangelical mini-comics you could occasionally find in diner booths, bus stop benches, and other public places? Well, someone has created a fully illustrated Chick Tract about what happened when Jack Chick Got To Heaven... and it's very much in keeping with the Chick Tract tradition.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ OCT 28, 2016

1. Our old pal Peter Bebergal - author of the essential Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll (Canadians buy here) - has just had an article about the Rosicrucians published in The New Yorker. It begins:

In the early seventeenth century, a series of anonymous pamphlets were published in Germany, announcing the existence of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, a fellowship of mystics and alchemists who, it was claimed, were working in secret to transform European politics and religion. The first of the pamphlets, which were later called the Rosicrucian manifestos, was the “Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis,” and it described a figure called C.R., who learned of magic and alchemy as he travelled through the Orient, two hundred years earlier, and then returned to Europe to share his new knowledge. A second pamphlet, “Confessio Fraternitatis,” appeared not long afterward, laying out the purpose and intentions of the fellowship and inviting others into the brotherhood, where they would “find more wonderful secrets by us then heretofore they did attain.” (This quote is taken from Thomas Vaughan’s translation of the manifestos, republished by Ouroboros Press in 2012.) These secrets would be revealed, the pamphlet explains, but only to a few, at first; in the meantime, they would be “declared in figures and pictures” that would one day become more widely understood. In 1616, a third document, “The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz,” appeared. “Rosenkreutz” is a German play on “Rosy Cross,” and seemed to be the mysterious C.R. of the “Fama.” 

In her landmark book “The Rosicrucian Enlightenment,” published in 1972, the historian Frances Yates concluded that the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross did not actually exist—but she also argued that the documents had helped to prompt a new way of thinking about the world, one that not only attempted to “penetrate to deep levels of religious experience” but inspired investigations in science and math as well.* This legacy had been obscured, she wrote, because “the advancing scientific revolution” was “eager to cast off the chrysalis out of which it [was] emerging.” Over the centuries, the Rosicrucian myth became the ur-legend for tales of shadowy groups using magic to alter the course of history. It influenced a number of nineteenth- and twentieth-century magical and mystical Christian orders, some of which claimed to have a direct lineage with the Rosicrucians. (Even Freemasons have claimed an early link to the group.) And the central idea of the manifestos—that through the application of magic and alchemy we might learn that we are a microcosm of the divine—helped to shape, along with Hermeticism, the occult imagination. 

In the centuries since, that tradition has informed the work of many artists and writers, among them the novelist and screenwriter John Crowley, now seventy-three...

And that's where things get interesting... or disappointing, depending on how much credence you've been giving those weird adverts featuring robe-bedecked figures shooting beams from their eyes that used to run in the back pages of Popular Science Magazine. Regardless, congratulations are once again due to Mr. Bebergal, who is fast becoming one of the DDD's favorite writers on the contemporary Pop Occulture beat!

2. One of the most paradoxically lovable hate-spewing right-wing lunatics of the post-war period in America has moved on to his eternal reward. Yes friends, it is with heavy heart that yer old pal Jerky announces the death of Jack Chick, paterfamilias of the Chick Tract Empire. You know Chick Tracts, don't you? They're those charmingly rough-hewn (and occasionally quite competent) miniature free comic books left in libraries, at subway stops, in restaurant booths, and other public places by practitioners of low-impact evangelical proselytism, tiny screeds bent on enlightening the secular-humanist-indoctrinated masses to the terrible truths about such topics as drugs and alcohol, abortion, homosexuality, Darwinian evolution, rock and roll, and... Dungeons & Dragons?! And, oh yeah, Roman Catholics, Muslims and Jews, natch! Fortunately, Jack's legacy lives on in the form of this immaculately organized online archive of his tracts.

3. And finally for today, I bring you a collection of animations created by Monty Python's sole American alumnus, Terry Gilliam, for the landmark britcom classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that went unused. Some of these are gorgeous, and I find them to be extremely inspiring, so why not share the wealth? Enjoy!

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HEY GUYS! If you enjoy the content I create and share with you here via the Daily Dirt Diaspora family of blogs - currently including the Daily Dirt Diaspora, the Useless Eater Blog, and Kubrick U - and you buy stuff through AMAZON.COM or (if you're in Canada, obviously) AMAZON.CA... would you mind occasionally entering those two sites via the links that I am providing here? Because when you do, no matter what you buy there - it doesn't have to be stuff that I promote! - I get a very small kickback, at ZERO COST to you! It's a great way to help keep yer old pal Jerky creating content! Because, man, let me tell you, the last time anyone tossed anything into my tip jar, I think we were all worrying about a potential Mitt Romney administration. Ah... happier days, eh? So come on, man! Use my Amazon portals, and keep me from having to set up a freaking Patreon account, like all the Worst People in the World are doing these days!

WAYMAN GRESHAM: GRASSROOTS EVERYMAN OR ASTROTURF SHILL?

I'm beginning to think we've all been punked by this "Wayman Gresham" individual. 

In case you haven't heard of him - and if you haven't, you're in the minority - Wayman Gresham is the most recent multi-million-hit, viral video phenomenon to appear all over the media, from breakfast TV to late-nite talk, to international newspapers and broadcast network news, celebrity Twitter accounts, and all over your own personal Facebook timeline. 

And it's all thanks to a single video, which he posted on Facebook less than a month ago, and which ends with an uplifting switcheroo twist. 

Here is the video in question, via Youtube. I'll explain why I wasn't able to link to the Facebook original deeper into this post:

So what we seem to have, here, is a somewhat overweight but otherwise perfectly normal family man, who is pretty much prime-time ready with his "Family Matters" mien and his adorably huggable "Christian love" ethics in practice, who apparently has a good, strong relationship with his son. And that's fine. Better than fine, even. It's great.

And then there's the video, in which he pretends like he's going to humiliate his son by shaving his hair on social media (something shitty parents have been doing lately, apparently leading to at least one teen suicide). only to pull a switcheroo and shame those who would shame their children publicly in such an awful way. Once again, I applauded. Very good message. I appreciated it. 

I even went so far as to find Mr Gresham on Facebook and ask to befriend him, and he hooked me up within minutes. And I was very pleased.

Then, I started getting his updates in my Facebook timeline. They were very Christian, which is not a problem for me. I have religious friends. I have a few religious beliefs of my own. He kept it light, you know, saying how he felt "God blessed" and shooting out little mini-prayers throughout the day. No biggie. It was not only unoffensive, I actually started asking myself "May we finally have found a great spokesman for modern American Christianity?"

And then his posts started getting political. He started bad-mouthing liberals, and getting just a bit fire and brimstone, making thinly-veiled allusions to various "non-Christians" and their "lifestyles"... if you know what I mean. 

It was when Gresham began signaling out President Obama with particularly nasty rhetoric - and defending the preznitcy of George Dubya Bush! - that I started to wonder if Mr Gresham had played a little "switcheroo" of his own on his new legion of fans. 

I started thinking to myself, how does some unknown entity post a video on Facebook, where only one's friends can see it - and NOT on Youtube, where anyone can see it - and somehow immediately manage to "go viral"? And I'm talking seriously viral, here, folks. Just do a search for "Wayman Gresham" on news.google.com and check out the hundreds of results from every media platform imaginable to see how far this virus has spread. 

How, in the span of less than a single month, can one man's private video reach not hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, but MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of people, without a little... outside intervention? A little help? A little boost of some sort?

Something about this stinks to me. It stinks to high heaven. In fact, it stank so bad, I decided to ask Mr Gresham about it in response to one of his most recent anti-Obama Facebook postings. 

He initially replied with a good natured, "Well, I receive your comment with respect and love, but you're wrong! Have a blessed day!" When I attempted to reply to his reply, I found that he had de-friended me. When I attempted to see if he'd removed my comments, I found that he'd also actively BLOCKED me. So now I can't see his account anymore, which is why I wasn't able to link to his original video, or to any of his comments that caused me to question his motives and/or provenance. 

And so we are left to ask ourselves... who might these "helpers", these "boosters", these "interveners" be? 

Let's think about this one for a bit. Might there anybody out there in the Big Bad World with a vested interest in having a nice, respectable, allegedly "Christian" Everyman, who also just happens to be black, with millions of followers on social media of all sorts, publicly attacking President Obama? 

I can see them all now, sitting in leather armchairs around a big redwood table, in a dimly-lit think tank meeting room, the air thick with cigar smoke, reasoning: "They won't be able to call him a racist, because he'll be a BLACK GUY!" And they all burst into cackling laughter that eventually devolves into uncontrollable phlegmatic hacking coughs. 

And now I ask you, Mr Gresham... who is pulling your strings? Who is behind the multi-million viral success of your video? Who are they, and at what point did they step in? Did they approach and buy your soul AFTER you had achieved some measure of success? Or have you been a bogus, manufactured propaganda product from the moment we first laid eyes upon you?

I have one last question for you, Mr Gresham, in case you're reading this AND you're a real person, and not just some kind of right-wing think tank propaganda regurgitating Manchurian program puppet. When Christ fasted in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, and Satan approached and offered Him dominion over all the world, and Christ refused... was He wrong to do so?

Thank you all for your time and attention.

THE BAFFLER ON THE LONG CON

If “every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” then the conservative movement is well onto the third phase of that life cycle.

One of my favorite magazines (journals? digests?) of all time was The Baffler Quarterly, which was published by Thomas Frank, current editor of Harper's (which has gone downhill since Lewis Lapham left to do his own quarterly, but is still worth reading).

Anyhoo, The Baffler was recently revived, and they have this amazing article about just exactly how the Conservative Media Elites really feel about the people who listen, watch and read them...

Here is a fine, elucidating example of the kind of brazen hucksterism that is being inflicted upon readers of NewsMax, The Blaze, Alex Jones’ websites, WorldNetDaily, etc, on a daily basis...

Dear Reader, I’m going to tell you something, but you must promise to keep it quiet. You have to understand that the “elite” would not be at all happy with me if they knew what I was about to tell you. That’s why we have to tread carefully. You see, while most people are paying attention to the stock market, the banks, brokerages and big institutions have their money somewhere else . . . [in] what I call the hidden money mountain . . . All you have to know is the insider’s code (which I’ll tell you) and you could make an extra $6,000 every single month.

If I were a cruel, heartless bastard, then maybe I could claim to be tickled pink over the fact that this particularly noxious socio-political demographic is getting fleeced, snookered, and bled bone dry by the very people they trust to cut through all the so-called "liberal media bias" and give them the real scoop about the world we live in... a world which they seem to believe is constantly on the brink of some sort of Apocalyptic collapse over President Blackenstein's historically unprecedented reign Socialist Islamic Terror...

Actually, scratch that. I am sort of tickled by it!

Anyway, you can read more, oh so delicious hilarity at The Baffler.

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Recommended supplemental reading:

• Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch
• Jesus Plus Nothing
• How the Hobby Lobby's Billions support a Right-Wing Political Agenda.
• Pretty much the entire Religion Section of the Rotten Library.

And here's a great book for y'all to check out:

Thunder on the Right, by Alan Crawford. This is one of the best books of its kind that I've found. So many juicy details on the "dignified" forefathers of the conservative movement.The origins of ALEC and Heritage are especially tawdry and funny.

IS THIS WHY THEY'RE KEEPING ARIEL SHARON ALIVE?!

I've always found it odd that The Powers That Be in Israel seem so desperate to keep former PM Ariel Sharon alive, despite the fact that he's been in a "persistent vegetative state" since being felled by a massive stroke on January 4, 2006. Contrary to the optimistic pronouncements of Sharon's immediate family, according to doctors, the poor man has essentially been bed-ridden and unresponsive for almost seven years now. I have always found the Jewish people to be very pragmatic in general, not given over to hoping where no hope can realistically exist. So why this insistence on keeping Sharon alive?  

Watch this Youtube video, and see if it doesn't provide an important clue to this mystery...

I'm not saying I believe everything stated in this video. However, I am saying that it's possible some people high up in the Israeli government believe it. And if such is, indeed, the case, what does it mean for our collective future on this planet once Ariel finally does slip free from the bonds of his brutally imposed half-life trapped in a cage of dead flesh?

I, PET GOAT II

This gorgeous animated short by a group of Montreal artists calling themselves Heliofant has inspired a ton of ridiculous, piss-poor analysis by the usual Xian, Illuminati-phobic suspects all over the Interwebs. This incredible piece of work (and I mean that on every level of the word) merits every second of the seven minutes of your undivided attention that it demands. You may watch it here, of course, but I recommend you download it from the source, at the creators' website.

ON THIS DAY IN PARAPOLITICS, MAY 25

It was on this day in 240 BC that ancient astronomers first recorded the perihelion passage of the celestial body that would eventually come to be known as Halley's Comet. Clear records of its appearances had been made by Chinese, Babylonian, and medieval European chroniclers over time, but it wasn't until 1705 that Edmond Halley realized it was the same object making return trips to our Solar System once every 75 years or so. Halley's Comet's last fly-by took place in 1986, and it won't be back until 2061.

On this day in 1521, rogue cleric Martin Luther is declared an outlaw by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who ends the Diet of Worms by declaring the Edict of Worms: "For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favour the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, where upon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work." To protect him, Prince Frederick of Saxony had Martin Luther kidnapped and hidden away in Wartburg Castle. Jeez... warts, worms... this story is making me nauseous. Let's move on, shall we?

On this day in 1895, playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison. While at Reading Gaol, he writes De Profundis, essentially one of the best-written break-up letters of all time.

On this day in 1926, Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, the head of the Paris-based government-in-exile of the Ukrainian People's Republic, ostensibly in retaliation for the latter's failure to prevent anti-Semitic pogroms in his former homeland during his two-year reign (1918-20).

On this day in 1953, the United States military conducts their first - and final - nuclear artillery test, at the Nevada Test Site. Fired as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole and codenamed Shot GRABLE, a 280 mm shell with a gun-type fission warhead was fired 6.2 miles and detonated 525 feet above the ground with an estimated yield of 15 kilotons. The shell was 4.5 feet long and weighed 805 lbs. It was fired from a special, very large, artillery piece, nicknamed Atomic Annie (see above). About 3,200 soldiers and civilians were present to witness the impressive fireworks display (see below).

On this day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of the Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade. Some people believe we made it, but a growing number beg to differ. Personally, whether we got to leave our footprints on the Moon or not, I think the whole thing was just a feel-good cover story for pouring billions into the development of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles... but what do I know?

On this day in 1986, a massive public event featuring a boatload of creepy participants taking part in an activity that is more than a little reminiscent of a massive occult ritual takes place. I refer, of course, to Hands Across America. I shudder to think what would have happened if the opposite ends of such a tremendous human circle had come together, Ouroboros-style. Perhaps...