THAT FACE HE KEPT MAKING AT THE FINAL DEBATE...

It reminded me of someone, but I couldn't put my pinkie on it until I pictured him without that Pomeranian that's usually perched atop his noggin.

Funny thing is, you can't even call Donald Trump a Dr of Evil, seeing as he got his degree in Evilology from Trump University... an unaccredited institution.

SUSPECT VIDEO AND CULTURE: THE END OF AN ERA

When it comes to contemplating the final days of Suspect Video and Culture - Toronto's combination video rental and retail shop / museum of cinematic esoterica / guerrilla film school campus - I am at a loss for words. Suspect has been a home away from home for me since I first came to Toronto in 1993 (they opened their doors in 1991), and the thought that it soon won't be there fills me with the kind of dread that usually comes with thoughts of one's own mortality. Losing the Queen West location to a massive, block-destroying blaze in 2008 ws bad enough... now this?!

Anyway, I'll have more to say on this subject soon enough. For now, I just wanted to let you know that yer old pal Jerky isn't the only one feeling this impending loss, as this wonderful video interview with Suspect master of ceremonies Luis Ceriz shall fittingly attest. So if you're in Toronto, why not make one last trip to the south-west corner of the Honest Ed building at Bathurst and Bloor? You can pick up a souvenir, take a few pictures, and relive the glorious 90's just like in Portland (where the dream of the 90's is still alive, apparently).

Keep watching this space...

S.S. TRUMP SPRINGS WIKILEAKS & A RAT ABANDONS SHIP

Ever since Julian Assange's arrival on the scene, yer old pal Jerky has been neither a critic, nor a supporter, of his Wikileaks operation. However, there's always seemed to be something a little bit "off" about him to me, and I'm not referring to the whole Swedish rape thing... intelligence agency "honeypot" traps are a real thing in this world (just ask Mordechai Vanunu). It's just that Assange has always come across as sort of an unsavory combination of crass self-promoter, Adbusters-style pseudo-intellectual, and the kind of cowardly chaos agent who starts fights but never sticks around to take part in them.

This impression has only intensified, both with myself and with the public at large, thanks to this unprecedented political season we're enduring. In fact, public opinion of Assange has taken an abrupt two way swing recently, with those who formerly called for his execution now hailing him as a hero, and those who used to eagerly await every new leak now dismissing him as a tool of the Trump campaign and/or the Kremlin. The Guardian's David Smith has written an interesting overview of this phenomenon, in case you're interested.

Then came today's breathlessly delivered news that "Assange's Internet Link was Severed by a State Actor!" ... which is just an emo way of of saying little Julian has had his Internet privileges suspended, which is what parents do when their kid behaves like a petulant, destructive brat who doesn't seem to understand the serious consequences his behavior could have on the rest of the family.

In other words, Ecuador did the smart thing. John Kerry probably gave them some serious food for thought re: the future of US/Ecuador diplomatic relations if they continued to allow an agent of Vladimir Putin to interfere with the most existentially consequential American election of the post-war era, and they made the smart play. Furthermore, I think they made the morally correct play. Assange is no Daniel Ellsberg. He isn't an Edward Snowden, nor a Chelsea Manning, either. Calling Assange a whistleblower at this point is an insult to the concept.

Besides, the ceaseless online braying of hyperventilating conspiritard deplorables notwithstanding, having one's Internet temporarily shut off is hardly the stuff of the Spanish Inquisition, or Guantanamo Bay... although that part of this saga might come soon enough for Assange, and also, fingers crossed, maybe for Trump.

"Why, Jerky!" you may be asking, "Whatever are you implying?! That there might be grounds for going after Julian Assange - and perhaps even Donald Trump - for such serious, potentially capital crime offenses as conspiracy to subvert an election, inciting and taking part in sedition, or maybe even TREASON?!"

Well, hypothetical you, all yer old pal Jerky is going to do is to point you in the direction of some interesting information, and then let YOU be the judge of that! Keeping in mind, of course, that this is a rapidly developing story which has only just begun to bubble over.

Let's watch this video, for starters.

Now, with the above information in mind, check out this Politico story about the reaction that Roger Stone had when informed about a potential FBI investigation into the links between the Wikileaks, the Kremlin, and the gaggle of Putin-friendly advisers to be found orbiting the Trump campaign. Stone, formerly one of Trump's top advisers and a lifelong super-sleazy GOP dirty tricks specialist, was initially dismissive, calling the idea of a federal investigation the work of "partisan hacks".

And then, all of a sudden, shit got real. And golly gee, what do you know? Old Roger Stone had a rather interesting reaction, essentially announcing that he'd be "happy" to participate in any federal investigation! Furthermore, he took to his Twitter feed to make the following eye-popping revelation: “It turns out the entity with which I signed a non-disclosure agreement for the Trump campaign was never legally constituted,” adding the hashtag “#invalid.”

The message, according to some, couldn’t be more clear. Veteran rat-fucker Roger Stone is letting it be known that, in order to save his own skin, he is ready, willing, and able to strike a deal with the Feds. And if that means abandoning the sinking ship that is the S.S. DONALD TRUMP, then so be it.

Wouldn't the irony be delicious - and wouldn't it be a fine example of turnabout as fair play - if the man who just spent a year inciting mobs of poorly educated. sycophantic personality cultists to chant "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!" were himself to get a taste of that Law and Order he keeps going on about, and end up spending the remainder of his life rotting in a federal penitentiary?

If you enjoy this kind of links-provided dot-connecting, bookmark this blog and keep watching this space!

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ OCTOBER 18, 2016

1. Matt Taibbi is one of the only reasons to read Rolling Stone Magazine anymore, and you shouldn't hold it against him that said severely compromised organ is the one that chose to publish this particularly entertaining and insightful piece of journalistic opinioneering, titled The Fury and Failure of Donald Trump. After vividly portraying the Wisconsin Massacre - wherein House Speaker Paul Ryan's public, on stage meltdown will serve as a "Franz Ferdinand" bookmark moment in future history book articles on the death of the GOP - Taibi goes on to remark:

Trump's early rampage through the Republican field made literary sense. It was classic farce. He was the lewd, unwelcome guest who horrified priggish, decent society, a theme that has mesmerized audiences for centuries, from Vanity Fair to The Government Inspector to (closer to home) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. When you let a hands-y, drunken slob loose at an aristocrats' ball, the satirical power of the story comes from the aristocrats deserving what comes next. And nothing has ever deserved a comeuppance quite like the American presidential electoral process, which had become as exclusive and cut off from the people as a tsarist shooting party. 

The first symptom of a degraded aristocracy is a lack of capable candidates for the throne. After years of indulgence, ruling families become frail, inbred and isolated, with no one but mystics, impotents and children to put forward as kings. Think of Nikolai Romanov reading fortunes as his troops starved at the front. Weak princes lead to popular uprisings. Which brings us to this year's Republican field. 

There wasn't one capable or inspiring person in the infamous "Clown Car" lineup. All 16 of the non-Trump entrants were dunces, religious zealots, wimps or tyrants, all equally out of touch with voters. Scott Walker was a lipless sadist who in centuries past would have worn a leather jerkin and thrown dogs off the castle walls for recreation. Marco Rubio was the young rake with debts. Jeb Bush was the last offering in a fast-diminishing hereditary line. Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer. And so on. 

The party spent 50 years preaching rich people bromides like "trickle-down economics" and "picking yourself up by your bootstraps" as solutions to the growing alienation and financial privation of the ordinary voter. In place of jobs, exported overseas by the millions by their financial backers, Republicans glibly offered the flag, Jesus and Willie Horton. 

In recent years it all went stale. They started to run out of lines to sell the public. Things got so desperate that during the Tea Party phase, some GOP candidates began dabbling in the truth. They told voters that all Washington politicians, including their own leaders, had abandoned them and become whores for special interests. It was a slapstick routine: Throw us bums out! 

Republican voters ate it up and spent the whole of last primary season howling for blood as Trump shredded one party-approved hack after another. By the time the other 16 candidates finished their mass-suicide-squad routine, a tail-chasing, sewer-mouthed septuagenarian New Yorker was accepting the nomination of the Family Values Party.

Whether you love him or hate him, there's no denying this Matt Taibbi boy can write. His Twitter feed is pretty entertaining, too.

2.  Next up, I urge each and every one of you reading this to carve out 20 minutes of uninterrupted quiet time to read this astonishingly frank and compelling Washington Post account of the turmoil roiling America's unofficial First Family of White Nationalism. Entitled "The White Flight of Derek Black", Eli Saslo's riveting account begins, in part, by describing what appear to be glory days for the Far Right's most popular father/son team, with an emphasis on the younger man's status as a movement rising star:

He never used racial slurs. He didn’t advocate violence or lawbreaking. He had won a Republican committee seat in Palm Beach County, Fla., where Trump also had a home, without ever mentioning white nationalism, talking instead about the ravages of political correctness, affirmative action and unchecked Hispanic immigration. 

He was not only a leader of racial politics but also a product of them. His father, Don Black, had created Stormfront, the Internet’s first and largest white nationalist site, with 300,000 users and counting. His mother, Chloe, had once been married to David Duke, one of the country’s most infamous racial zealots, and Duke had become Derek’s godfather. They had raised Derek at the forefront of the movement, and some white nationalists had begun calling him “the heir.” 

Now Derek spoke in Memphis about the future of their ideology. “The Republican Party has to be either demolished or taken over,” he said. “I’m kind of banking on the Republicans staking their claim as the white party.” 

A few people in the audience started to clap, and then a few more began to whistle, and before long the whole group was applauding. “Our moment,” Derek said, because at least in this room there was consensus. They believed white nationalism was about to drive a political revolution. They believed, at least for the moment, that Derek would help lead it. 

“Years from now, we will look back on this,” he said. “The great intellectual move to save white people started today.”

Folks, this story goes places and exposes you to realities that you will NOT see coming, I can almost guarantee it. Read this story, absorb it fully, deal with it, grapple with it, then help spread it around. I don't get anything out of this except knowing that I have maybe helped to guide a few more eyeballs towards an important, Pulitzer Prize-worthy piece of journalism. And, yes, that IS Ron Paul up in that photo with Derek and Don.

3. Okay then... after all that heavy stuff, I think we could all use a little comic relief. And so I hereby present the one and only Peter Serafinowicz's latest amazing Sassy Trump video!

I particularly love this video because it highlights a great example of Trump indulging in his favorite pastime, psychological projection, in such a way that causes him to say something that he probably regrets the moment the words slip past his lips. Trump, about whom speculation of cocaine abuse has swirled since his fidgety, aggro, sniffles-plagued performance in the first two debates, accusing Hillary of drug abuse is a concept that is almost perfect in its symmetrical idiocy. James Fallowes over at The Atlantic has an interesting take on this incident, which is even more unintentionally revealing than the time Trump said: "She has tremendous hate in her heart, believe me!"

I'm not even kidding about this: Hillary should show up to the next debate with a urine sample jar, some drug test dip sticks, a doctor willing to witness the sampling, and see whether or not Trump still wants to go through with it. For added comic effect, Hillary could declare: "Don't worry, Donald! This doctor is willing to sign a non-disclosure form regarding the actual size of your penis!"  My best educated guess? Donald probably won't go for it.

DONALD TRUMP ~ A PORTRAIT

I drew this during the first debate, which I watched with my good friends Kristan and Matt, in order to keep my hands occupied, just in case I inadvertently lashed out and accidentally punched a hole in the wall. I know it isn't much, particularly insofar as political cartoons go, but heck, it's the best I could do under the circumstances. I'll try to do better in future efforts. In the meantime, ENJOY! - YOPJ

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ OCTOBER 14, 2016

1. The Anti-Trump Master List is a mind-boggling compilation put together by the Quantum-Displacement Tumblr that every American of voting age should be forced to read from top to bottom - then quizzed on - before being allowed to pull a lever (or smudge a touch-screen) on election day. A few choice examples (all of which are extensively sourced) include:

- North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Un endorses Donald Trump.
- Russian leader with history of human rights abuses Vladimir Putin endorses Trump.
- Imam of known Islamic Terrorist (Omar Mateen) endorses Trump.
- K.K.K endorses Trump.
- Convicted Neo-Nazi Terrorist Don Black endorses Trump.
- Chinese Communist Party endorses Trump.
- Serbian War Criminal Vojislav Seselj endorses Trump.
- Greek Neo-Nazi leader Ilias Panagiotaros endorses Trump.
- White supremacist cult leader August Kreis III endorses Trump during sentencing hearing after he is found guilty of child molestation.
- Russian Fascist Aleksandr Dugin endorses Trump.
- Trump brags about endorsement from convicted murderer and repeatedly accused fraudster Don King.
- Trump praises Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein.
- Trump retweets quote from Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini.
- Trump uses picture of Nazi soldiers in official campaign poster.
- Legal Experts find dozens of Trump policy propositions that would violate the constitution. “Trump is threat to rule of law.”
- Law Scholars agree, in order to enact plans Trump would have to violate First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Bill of Rights, 14th Amendment, due process, equal protection, and the doctrine of enumerated and limited executive powers.
- The ACLU made a list of all of Trumps unconstitutional propositions. (It’s 28 pages long.)
- Trumps Immigration plan unconstitutional.
- Trumps Muslim plan unconstitutional.
- Trump pledges to open up Libel Laws on Newspapers in order to curb Freedom of the Press.
- Trump promises to ban porn if elected president.

Just a reminder, the above constitutes the absolute remotest tip of a rather substantial and formidable iceberg... an iceberg composed of frozen, radioactive sewage. Folks, the Rubicon is in the rear view mirror at this point. The disaster cannot be averted, because it is currently ongoing. All that can be done at this point is mitigation. Hop to it.

2. Just in case you hadn't already heard, everybody's favorite real-world analog to Tony "Iron Man" Stark has staked out an... interesting philosophical position:

Elon Musk has said that there is only a “one in billions” chance that we’re not living in a computer simulation. 

Our lives are almost certainly being conducted within an artificial world powered by AI and highly-powered computers, like in The Matrix, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO suggested at a tech conference in California. 

Mr Musk, who has donated huge amounts of money to research into the dangers of artificial intelligence, said that he hopes his prediction is true because otherwise it means the world will end.

Cheerful, ain't he? Personally, although yer old pal Jerky enjoys a good late-night, Epistemology 101 mind-fuck as much as the next phenomenologically suspect manifestation of Being-in-the-World, I suspect that solipsism on this unprecedentedly epic scale might only occur under a very specific set if circumstances, among which could be included: taking part in one too many cocaine-and-research-chemical-fueled brainstorming retreats with all your techno-fetishist Transhumanist pals; having one too many of your harebrained bullshit hunches prove to be billion-dollar market disruptors; being surrounded by a few too many brown-nosing, sycophantic corporate Yes Men; landing somewhere just shy of "institutionalization recommended" on the Autism Spectrum... you know, that kind of thing. On the other hand, maybe Musk is just experiencing some difficulty coming to terms with the prospect of his own inevitable mortality, and he is failing to take into account the incredibly terrifying implications of an existence in which instead of simply dying, he re-spawns again, and again, and again, and again... ad infinitum. I'll let you guys be the judge.

3. It has been one hell of a long time since I mentioned anything about Rush Fucking Limbaugh in any venue and/or context, both online and off, but once you listen to the above segment from his radio show, I think you'll agree that it totally deserves to be spread far and wide. It really is staggering, the lack of self-awareness on display as he serves up a heaping helping of conservative sexual morality for his dwindling audience of ditto-head dead-enders. Just in case you can't stand the sound of his oxycontin-crusted vocal chords, here is a transcription:

You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.

So we've come to it at last. In his haste to disavow and defame all things liberal, Limbaugh has had to come out against the concept of consent being an important part of sexual morality. Now if only someone would inform him that liberals are totally against trying to breathe underwater, and hate the taste of razor blades, then we might really get to something good.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ OCTOBER 11, 2016

1. With this in-depth Washington Post profile of Trump supporter Melanie Austin, journalist Stephanie McCrummen succeeds in arousing equal parts dread, revulsion and an almost tragic sort of paradoxical empathy. In fact, it seems to me as though she has succeeded in coining a new genre: Horror Journalism. 

I mean, just check out this part, from early in the article:

The first time she had seen him, at a rally in June, she was just beginning to realize how many people saw the world the way she did, that she was one among millions. At the time, her hips were still sore from a series of injections intended to calm her. She had gotten them in February, during a difficult time in her life, when she had been involuntarily hospitalized for several weeks after what she called a “rant,” a series of online postings that included one saying that Obama should be hanged and the White House fumigated and burned to the ground. On her discharge papers, in a box labeled “medical problem,” a doctor had typed “homicidal ideation.” 

Melanie thought the whole thing was outrageous. She wasn’t a person with homicidal ideation. She was anxious, sure. Enraged, definitely. But certainly not homicidal, and certainly not in need of a hospital stay. 

“It never crossed my mind that I’m losing it,” she said several months after her release, and a big reason for this conviction was the rise of Donald Trump, who had talked about so many of the things she had come to believe — from Obama being a founder of the terrorist group ISIS, to Hillary Clinton being a co-founder, to the idea that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered in a White House plot involving a prostitute and a pillow. 

“They say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow,” Trump had told the talk-radio host Michael Savage, who was using his show to explain the scenario to his 5 million weekly listeners, who then spread it on Facebook, where it wound up in Melanie’s feed. 

To Melanie, this was the glory of the 2016 presidential election. The truth about so many things was finally being accepted, from the highest levels of the Republican Party on down to the grass roots of America, where so many people like her didn’t care what some fact-checker said, much less that one day Trump would suggest that Obama wasn’t born in America, and on another say maybe he was. 

More and more, she was meeting people who felt the same as she did, joining what amounted to a parallel world of beliefs that the Trump campaign had not so much created as harnessed and swept into the presidential election. As Melanie saw it, what she had posted about Obama was no different from what a New Hampshire state legislator and Trump campaign adviser had said about Hillary Clinton, that she “should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.” 

“If it’s time to lock me up, it’s time to lock up the world,” Melanie remembered thinking when she had heard that. 

And so when she was released from the hospital with instructions to “maintain a healthy lifestyle,” she did what seemed to her not only healthy but also patriotic. She began campaigning for Trump.

See what I mean? Stephen King ain't got nothing on this shit. I urge everyone to read this article - digest it, get it, GROK it - and react accordingly. Yes, I know, there are issues of failed public policy here that are glancingly touched upon that are going to take decades to properly address. We are only now beginning to understand the damage wrought upon the body politic by the Internet and those who seek to bend it to serve their will to watch the world burn. But that's a fight for another day. Over the next thirty days, it's all about there aren't enough Melanie Austins out there to tip the scales in favor of the Apocalypse. After that... well, get ready for some heavy lifting because buddy, weird times lie ahead, whether you're ready or not.

2. It has been happening less and less frequently, but in my unfocused online wanderings I still occasionally stumble across some amazing stuff. This English translation of the GHDI*'s transcripts from a series of secretly recorded conversations between captured Nazi physicists reacting to news of the USA dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese at Hiroshima is a prime example, containing more dramatic intensity and complex emotional impact than any half-dozen recent Hollywood "historical dramas" you can name.

I mean, considering how close they came (German scientists being the first to theorize the possibility), the implications raised by the discussions captured are enough to raise goosebumps in the most stoic of flesh.

The transcripts are set up neatly by a brief introduction:

At the beginning of the war, Germany’s leading nuclear physicists were called to the army weapons department. There, as part of the “uranium project” under the direction of Werner Heisenberg, they were charged with determining the extent to which nuclear fission could aid in the war effort. (Nuclear fission had been discovered by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in 1938.) Unlike their American colleagues in the Manhattan Project, German physicists did not succeed in building their own nuclear weapon. In June 1942, the researchers informed Albert Speer that they were in no position to build an atomic bomb with the resources at hand in less than 3-5 years, at which point the project was scrapped. 

After the end of the war, both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union tried to recruit the German scientists for their own purposes. From July 3, 1945, to January 3, 1946, the Allies incarcerated ten German nuclear physicists at the English country estate of Farm Hall, their goal being to obtain information about the German nuclear research project by way of surreptitiously taped conversations. The following transcript includes the scientists’ reactions to reports that America had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The scientists also discuss their relationship to the Nazi regime and offer some prognoses for Germany’s future.

All you history buffs out there - especially World War II history buffs - you're not gonna want to miss this one.

3. And finally for today, I would like to share with you a website that gives yer old pal Jerky one hell of a brain boner: a catalogue of incredibly difficult-to-find books about the occult, currently on offer from legendary Thompson's Rare Books in British Columbia, Canada. Enjoy!

* GHDI = German History in Documents and Images

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

1. Decreasingly right-wing gay Catholic media gadfly Andrew Sullivan has penned a thoughtful, engaging piece for New York Magazine going over some of the darker aspects of his experiences with social media over the years. I found it sufficiently reminiscent of my own experiences to be troubled by it, and to want to share it with you, the few dozen people who read this blog on a regular basis, because I think y'all might get something out of it. Sullivan begins:

I was sitting in a large meditation hall in a converted novitiate in central Massachusetts when I reached into my pocket for my iPhone. A woman in the front of the room gamely held a basket in front of her, beaming beneficently, like a priest with a collection plate. I duly surrendered my little device, only to feel a sudden pang of panic on my way back to my seat. If it hadn’t been for everyone staring at me, I might have turned around immediately and asked for it back. But I didn’t. I knew why I’d come here. 

A year before, like many addicts, I had sensed a personal crash coming. For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Throughout the day, I’d cough up an insight or an argument or a joke about what had just occurred or what was happening right now. And at times, as events took over, I’d spend weeks manically grabbing every tiny scrap of a developing story in order to fuse them into a narrative in real time. I was in an unending dialogue with readers who were caviling, praising, booing, correcting. My brain had never been so occupied so insistently by so many different subjects and in so public a way for so long. 

I was, in other words, a very early adopter of what we might now call living-in-the-web. And as the years went by, I realized I was no longer alone. Facebook soon gave everyone the equivalent of their own blog and their own audience. More and more people got a smartphone — connecting them instantly to a deluge of febrile content, forcing them to cull and absorb and assimilate the online torrent as relentlessly as I had once. Twitter emerged as a form of instant blogging of microthoughts. Users were as addicted to the feedback as I had long been — and even more prolific. Then the apps descended, like the rain, to inundate what was left of our free time. It was ubiquitous now, this virtual living, this never-stopping, this always-updating. I remember when I decided to raise the ante on my blog in 2007 and update every half-hour or so, and my editor looked at me as if I were insane. But the insanity was now banality; the once-unimaginable pace of the professional blogger was now the default for everyone. 

If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out. Years later, the joke was running thin. In the last year of my blogging life, my health began to give out. Four bronchial infections in 12 months had become progressively harder to kick. Vacations, such as they were, had become mere opportunities for sleep. My dreams were filled with the snippets of code I used each day to update the site. My friendships had atrophied as my time away from the web dwindled. My doctor, dispensing one more course of antibiotics, finally laid it on the line: “Did you really survive HIV to die of the web?”

Continue reading at New York Magazine.

2. Let's go ahead and give this edition of the Daily Dirt Diaspora's Suggested Reading List a decidedly schizophrenic bent by having our second offering highlight something absolutely wonderful about new media and the internet: namely that we live at a time when wisdom such as that which Terence McKenna had to offer can be shared freely with whoever wants to hear it. Listen to this substantial, substantive podcast in order to hear one of the great teachers of our beleaguered age tell you such things as:

What psychedelics are about is deconditioning all of these culturally induced, sensory biases and ideological biases, basically it reshuffles the intellectual and sensory deck. And it’s a wonderful, salutary thing to come along for Western culture at this moment because we’re basically running out of intellectual steam. Technology is moving ahead lickety split without looking over its shoulder, but our social systems, our religious ontologies, our theories of polity, city planning, community, resource sharing, all of this is 19th Century at best. And so, really whether we live or perish as a species probably has to do with how much consciousness we can raise from any source available.

And this:

If consciousness is not part of our future then what kind of future can it be?

And this:

Culture is an intelligence test.

And also this:

I like to think that the psychedelic community has always been a source of visionary common sense because the psychedelic community, generally speaking, has not generated ideology.

And, finally, a bit of hope at this horrifying time in our history:

I think primates are most interesting when cornered.

Let's hope he's right about that. Listen to the podcast for tons more provocative, enlightening statements and interactions with his live studio audience. Then go out and listen to more McKenna podcasts, watch his videos, and read his goddamn books. He was a real treasure, and we lost him far too soon.

3. Guess who's back? Yes friends, that's right... outspoken liberal rage-monster Keith Olbermann has returned from exile after being fired from the ostensibly "liberal" MSNBC while at the top of that organ's ratings - the same fate that befell fellow progressive Phil Donahue, interestingly enough - this time, as a "special correspondent" for GQ Magazine's online multi-media platform. And his debut video is a fuckin' doozy. I sure dug it, in all its overblown, semi-exaggerated, and yet still all-too-horrifyingly-true glory, and I imagine most of you will appreciate it, too.

MEDIAVORE~FILM: BULLET REVIEWS

DE PALMA ~ A documentary about filmmaker Brian De Palma in which the man himself takes us through his career, film by film, from its intriguing beginnings, through his tenure as one of the 70's wunderkinds alongside Speilberg, Lucas, Scorcese and the rest, through his time as Hollywood's most productive controversialist, with the occasional bypass into blockbuster-land, up to the present day. If you're already a fan, this film will delight you. If you aren't, this film might convert you. At the very least, you'll walk away with a bunch of new movies you'll be wanting to see. Highly recommended!

MILES AHEAD ~ Don Cheadle stars as Miles Davis in a somewhat entertaining but ultimately poorly conceived heist film, which is a terrible, confusing waste, because Cheadle actually makes for a very convincing Miles Davis. The producers' excuse, apparently, was that they didn't have sufficient budget to make a biopic worthy of the jazz titan's life and legacy, so they decided to make the kind of streetwise crime flick that Miles was known to be a fan of. Which is all well and good, but as I watched, even while I was occasionally entertained, I couldn't help but shake my head at the squandered potential of the thing. Your mileage may vary.

THE IMITATION GAME ~ There may very well be a way to make the complex, intriguing, tragic life of landmark computing philosophy pioneer Alan Turing into a riveting cinematic experience. Unfortunately, the people behind this Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle were not made privy to it before making this ever so British "date night" confection, which is far more reminiscent of The King's Speech than any film other than The King's Speech has any right to be. In case you're wondering, Oscars be damned, that is NOT a good thing.

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN ~ Errol Morris is one of America's most acclaimed documentarians, and his 2003 Robert McNamara documentary The Fog of War could very well be his finest work to date. That film is almost like a university level political science course boiled down to a 107 minute documentary. While watching 2013's The Unknown Known, I couldn't help but think he was going for a repeat performance, but just as Donald Rumsfeld is no Robert McNamara, The Unknown Known is no Fog of War. Whereas McNamara was a thoughtful, philosophical, forthcoming interview subject who was genuinely interested in getting at some semblance of truth at the core of the mess that is the historical record, Rumsfeld seems all too comfortable taking cover in the smothering swirl of confusion choking America's recent past like a shroud - a confusion that he, himself, was instrumental in creating. I have read some reviews that call The Unknown Known a horror movie of sorts, with Rumsfeld playing the role of the monster. His weirdly disconcerting laugh, his reptilian smirk, his self-satisfied sophistry (none of which is as clever as he seems to think it is) all combine to make for an altogether unwholesome package, void of revelation or any sort of satisfaction. In short, Rumsfeld: 1, Morris: 0, which has to stand as a minor tragedy of sorts.

LEMONS FOR EVERYONE, BY TRANS LOVE AIRWAYS

I don't know what it's going to take for me to convince you that my friend Steve Banks (peace be upon him) wrote, and his band Trans Love Airways performed, the single greatest Canadian rock song of all time. So I guess I'll just keep trying to educate you fools. I mean, just listen to that song. And then just look at that video's play count. Does that seem at all logical to you?!

NEW FILM SPARKS OSCAR BUZZ FOR “RAPED BY A PACK OF NIGGERS” STAR

Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, which recently premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, is a taut, effective combat drama set in World War II, one of the many wars which Gibson blames on “the fucking Jews”, who also - as Gibson has expended a great deal of time, energy, and money to make sure the world never forgets - are the same people who killed Jesus Christ.

Hacksaw Ridge is the first movie Gibson has directed since Apocalypto, which came out right around the time he called the female officer arresting him for drunk driving “sugar tits” and correctly identified her partner as being a member of the Jewish race, all before threatening: “I will fuck you. I own Malibu.” 

It’s the true story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor, and a man who probably never would have dreamed of physically assaulting his girlfriend, calling her a “bitch”/“whore”/“cunt”/“pig in heat”, saying that he hopes she gets “raped by a pack of niggers”, then threatening to rape her, himself, before burning her house down.

The question of whether or not a filmmaker’s personal behavior should influence critics’ opinions of their films isn’t an easy one to answer. Just ask Frank Rich, whose critical take on The Passion of The Christ led Gibson to publicly declare: “I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.”

Hacksaw Ridge reaches theaters in November, when studios typically release the films that they believe have a good chance of scoring an Academy Award. It remains to be seen whether or not Gibson’s history of controversial public statements will affect the judgement of AMPAS' voting members, a demographic heavily weighted not just with Jesus-killers, but also with men who “take it up the ass”, an orifice which Gibson has publicly stated should be reserved “only for taking a shit.”

On the plus side for Gibson, however, the Academy’s ranks number hardly any “wetbacks” at all.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ SEPTEMBER 2, 2016

1. I usually don't like posting to our old pal David Cole Stein's Taki's Mag pieces, preferring to link to his personal site, instead. But his latest piece on the current Trolls and True Believers crisis plaguing pop conservatism is just too good not to draw your attention to. It begins:

I’ll just come right out and say it—in my column two weeks ago, in which I interviewed three well-known Trump diehards—I straight-out lied to my readers. But I am coming clean. One of my interview subjects, Margaret MacLennan, had recently left her position as director of Milo Yiannopoulos’ “privilege grant” (the scholarship program for “white men who wish to pursue their post-secondary education on equal footing with their female, queer and ethnic minority classmates”). In my column, I stated that I had no idea why Milo and Margaret ended their partnership. In fact, I knew exactly why, and I’d known the truth for a good three months, but I had to pretend that I didn’t, in order to keep a confidence. 

The actual story behind the breakup is not only interesting but rather instructive at this moment in time, so I’m glad it broke on its own the week my column posted, as the process of sitting on it for so long was starting to give me a mightily sore ass. And what a great segue to Milo. You see, it turns out there are a few improprieties regarding the money the self-proclaimed “dangerous faggot” raised for the “grant” program. As in, somewhere in the neighborhood of $350,000 seems to have vanished. ... 

Well, damn, if you can’t trust a contemptuous, publicity-seeking, sociopathic narcissist who indulges in every opportunity to publicly proclaim his love of “black dick,” who can you trust?

 Damn, Dave! That's saucier than the tablecloth at the local Buffalo Wings emporium after yours truly is finished one of my marathon suicide-by-hot-wings sessions! And the way you bring it all back around to how Trump has been strumming his constituency like a well-tuned harp from the get-go? Well, that's just the chunky deluge of blue cheese dressing that drenches my labored analogy to gluttonous completion. Kudos, old pal... Kudos.

2. What do you get when you stick some of the conspiracy world's biggest celebrities and their die-hard fans on a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a week? Some fascinating insight into our strange times. And one near fistfight. Author Bronwen Dickey's article for Popular Mechanics (yes, I know, they're amongst the shilliest shills in all of shilldom) begins thusly:

It was a bit after seven, and I should have been downstairs on Plaza Deck, dressed in formal attire and enjoying dinner with the conspiracy theorists. There were about a hundred of them, and they were nearing the end of their week—the last week in January—aboard the Ruby Princess. Many of them were older people, and each of them had paid $3,000 (not including airfare and beverages on board) to participate in the first-ever Conspira-Sea Cruise, a weeklong celebration of "alternative science" hosted by a tour company called Divine Travels. For the past five days, they had debated UFOs, GMOs, government mind-control programs, vaccines, chemtrails, crop circles, and the Illuminati's plan for world domination, all while soaking up the mystical energies of three Mexican tourist towns known mainly for wet T-shirt contests and Señor Frog's.

But I was not on Plaza Deck. I was locked in my stateroom on Baja Deck, picking at a room-service cheeseburger. Earlier that afternoon, a pair of Conspira-Sea presenters had chased me—chased me—from a conference room. This wasn't our first confrontation, and now I feared they were tracking me around the ship, waiting to spring out from blind corners and empty doorways. 

Understand that I don't consider myself the paranoid type. Although when I had come across the Conspira-Sea Cruise on a science blog a few months earlier, I'd known I wanted to go, but not because I fear dark forces are out to get me. I used to love The X-Files, and the prospect of discussing Roswell and JFK over piña coladas sounded like fun. So did getting to know some devoted conspiracy wonks. Wondering whether the world is actually as it seems is a uniquely American sport, and there's plenty of evidence that's worth wondering about—this is the country of Watergate and the Tuskegee experiments and the NSA tapping your phone.

But the Ruby Princess was no place for casual wonderers. The Ruby Princess was for people who scraped together three grand to be reassured that their fears and suspicions and theories aren't the lonely fever dreams of basement-dwelling outcasts, that those fears and suspicions are valid, and that others share them. It would be like a weeklong, in-person internet chat room.

At this point, those of you who've been reading my humble typings over the past decade and a half might be wondering "But Jerky! Old pal! Don't you fancy yourself a bit of a conspiracy theorist?" As a matter of fact, old pal, I kind of do. Lately, however, I've been so disgusted by the dis-and-misinformation-spewing antics of Alex "False Flaggot" Jones and his patently dishonest, obviously contemptible, dangerously idiotic ilk, that I have found myself backing away from the label that I once wore with pride. To this day, I still consider myself more of a Carl Oglesby type conspiracy guy, and less of a David Icke (or Duke) conspiracy type guy. To my reckoning, the InfoWarriors and Rensers and Red Icers, who believe nothing except the polar opposite of whatever the dreaded "lamestream news" reports, are among the woolliest sheeple of them all.

3. And along comes Tim Heidecker, of Tim and Eric infamy, to take the alt.right's most cutting insult - "CUCK", a neologism which just so happens to be the single creation about which they are most (and most vocally) proud - and flip it around, judo-style, exposing the utter bankruptcy of that movement's much heralded "sense of humor".  There is only one legitimately funny alt.right comedy outlet, and we'll be discussing them more in the next installment of the DDD's Suggested Reading List. In the meantime... ENJOY!

NEW BOOK EXPLORES A FASCINATING ASPECT OF CONTEMPORARY COMICS

Thanks to a recommendation from the ever-awesome comics legend Stephen Bissette, yours truly has been made aware of a new book exploring one of the more salutary developments in contemporary comicdom: the explosion, and ongoing influence, of ground-breaking, formula-exploding, taboo-shattering writers from the British Isles.

The book has a rather unwieldy title - The British Invasion: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and the Invention of the Modern Comic Book Writer - but don't let that deter you. As Bissette declared in a recent Facebook post: "it's a pretty brilliant book and spot-on. ... I can honestly say Greg's not only done his homework, he's synthesized it all into a concise, involving, flowing read that's so true to the experience of those years ... that I'm getting sensory flashbacks at times ... RECOMMENDED!"

I've gone ahead and ordered a copy for myself, and I'd love it if some of you did the same, so we could do some kind of book club type thing together and discuss it in a forum I'll create for us on Facebook.

If you're in the USA, kindly order your copy from this link, which will result in a few shekels being dropped into yer old pal Jerky's beggin' cup. Meanwhile, if you currently reside in the howling wilds of Canada, then kindly use this link, as I have recently fixed it so that my affiliate program works there now, too! I went through a bit of a hassle to arrange for this, so PLEASE, if you're gonna order this book, order it through my affiliate links!

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ AUGUST 22, 2016

1. It should come as no surprise that the growing cohort of conservative movementarians trying to promote the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory haven't got the first fucking clue what they're yammering about. But in case you've recently bumped into said aberrant ideation and were curious as to what all the hubbub was about, why not check out what an actual, bona fide Marxist has to say about the subject? Michael Acuña begins his excellent analytical and historical overview thusly:

Across the paleoconservative blogosphere, on every “libertarian” forum and racist webpage, a strange concept is faulted for the turmoil witnessed in North America and Europe today, as well as for the alleged breakdown of Western social mores. ‘Cultural Marxism’ is the name these courageous right-wing dissidents have assigned this corrosive force. 

So what exactly is cultural Marxism and how is it that so many ostensibly capitalist societies haven fallen victim to it? The narrative varies depending on the political leaning of the individual disseminating it, but its standard rendition is as follows: a sect of European intellectuals, disillusioned by the failure of orthodox Marxist parties to mobilize the proletariat into conflict with the bourgeoisie, came to the conclusion that the original Marxist formulation was incorrect. Western workers simply possessed too conservative a disposition for communism’s egalitarian rhetoric to appeal to them. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s dialectical theory of capitalism’s internal contradictions generating a qualitatively higher mode of production—communism—was flawed. There were ideological obstacles preventing the economic synthesis from being realized. The solution to Marxism’s theoretical errors these thinkers arrived at was to replace class as the locus of struggle with culture. In other words, the traditional Marxist Klassenkampf was to be entirely replaced by a neo-Marxist Kulturkampf. 

These men, many of whom were psychoanalysts of Jewish descent (a fact of particular interest to fascists), came to be known as the ‘Frankfurt school’ due to their affiliation with the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, located in Frankfurt, Germany. The subversive ideas this faction of assorted academicians and literati conjured up had a profound effect on Western intellectuals and eventually infected the minds of North America’s and Europe’s cultural elite via university indoctrination, the story goes on, thereby leading to the liberal social movements and various projects of social engineering observed today, e.g., feminism, LGBTQ rights, multiculturalism, and political correctness. To quote the late conservative political commentator Andrew Breitbart:

"We can call it cultural Marxism, but at the end of the day, we experience it on a day to day basis. By that I mean, a minute by minute, second by second basis. It’s political correctness and it’s multiculturalism." 

But how well does this chilling tale conform to reality? Not very. However, before describing the actual causes of the social maladies certain conservatives impute to ‘cultural Marxism,’ I believe it would be instructive to trace the origins of this conspiracy theory; for, in so doing, we shall discover that it is little more than the latest iteration of the right-wing’s ceaseless Red Scare effort. 

Let us begin at the beginning, with Karl Marx himself...

What follows is a carefully constructed, engagingly written, and convincingly definitive account of this patently ridiculous, reactionary meme. Also, be sure to read through the voluminous comments section, where Acuña makes a good faith effort to patiently engage with and educate an alt.right True Believer. The latter's increasingly desperate flailing in the face of an ideological opponent whose knowledge and basic intelligence so obviously eclipse his own comes close to being as revealing about the insidious core of the Current Crisis as Acuña's essay, itself.

2. Ladies and gentlemen, take a firm grip on your favorite religious fetish object, apply a fresh coating of drool-repellent aerosol spray on your anti-nightmare body pillow, and enter the world of DINILD TRIMP! Don't say I didn't try to warn you.

3. This one goes out to all my dungeon crawlin' homies. Whaddaya think, boys? Would our weekend-long sessions of AD&D have been more enjoyable if one of us had invested in a half-acre sized replica of the pseudo-medieval worlds of our vivid, sex-starved, teen-aged imaginations? I dunno... maybe yes, maybe no. Sure is impressive, though...

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ AUGUST 14, 2016

1. The New York Times Review of Books project/article entitled "Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart" - at upwards of 40,000 words in five chapters, it's really more of a free book than an article - is an amazingly civic-minded gift to the people of the United States and, indeed, the world at large. Editor Jake Silverstein explains:

This is a story unlike any we have previously published. It is much longer than the typical New York Times Magazine feature story; in print, it occupies an entire issue. The product of some 18 months of reporting, it tells the story of the catastrophe that has fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq 13 years ago, leading to the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis. The geography of this catastrophe is broad and its causes are many, but its consequences — war and uncertainty throughout the world — are familiar to us all. Scott Anderson’s story gives the reader a visceral sense of how it all unfolded, through the eyes of six characters in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Accompanying Anderson’s text are 10 portfolios by the photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawn from his extensive travels across the region over the last 14 years, as well as a landmark virtual-reality experience that embeds the viewer with the Iraqi fighting forces during the battle to retake Falluja. 

It is unprecedented for us to focus so much energy and attention on a single story, and to ask our readers to do the same. We would not do so were we not convinced that what follows is one of the most clear-eyed, powerful and human explanations of what has gone wrong in this region that you will ever read.

Would it be overly dramatic to suggest that anyone who wishes to be well informed about the current realpolitik owes it to himself and to his fellow countrymen to not only read this thing from beginning to end, but also to get as many of his friends and neighbors to do so, as well? If so, so be it. I stand by that statement, and urge you all to read and share and help to spread.

2. Mark Ames, one of the intrepid sleuths behind NSFWCORP.com, has dug up a fascinating historical document: a Koch-funded article for REASON Magazine that purports to teach far-right "libertarians" how to woo (i.e. trick) liberals and lefties into coming over to their cause! It begins:

I wouldn't be the first to point out how embarrassingly easy it has been for rancid Koch libertarian front groups to convince those on the Left that they are all on the same team. As Salon writer Tom Watson wrote, the event is "fatally compromised by the prominent leadership and participation of the Libertarian Party and other libertarian student groups [who stand] in direct opposition to almost everything I believe in as a social democrat." 

What hasn't been revealed until now, however, is how the libertarians got so good at fooling their lefty marks. For that you have to look back 35 years, to an amazing series of articles in the Koch brothers' REASON magazine in which prominent libertarians lay out to a new generation of followers a playbook of "tricks" to fool earnest leftists, liberals and hippies into supporting their cause. 

If you really believe that these events are about promoting freedom and humanitarianism, you're going to be even more disturbed by what libertarians had to say about conning liberals in their more unguarded moments, before their "tricks" worked and they were able to pull off these big DC "strange bedfellows" events like clockwork. 

One of the most shocking strategy articles comes in a REASON article headlined "Marketing Libertarianism" written by Moshe Kroy, and published in the February 1977 issue.

The article is chock-a-block with eyebrow-raising admissions and nakedly mercenary libertarian evangelism of the type anyone unlucky enough to have ever had a friend going through an Ayn Rand phase will be all too familiar with. It's also pretty hilarious. Highly recommended!

*** 

3. There's trolling, there's epic trolling... and then there's Sam Hyde. The jagged, Satanic wit behind much of the more "problematic" output of Million Dollar Extreme - arguably the most potent comedic trio to emerge since the passing of The Three Stooges - delights in sowing confusion and discord wherever he goes, perhaps never so much so as when he posed as a finagled his way onto the stage at a TEDx event at Drexel University last year. His performance has become the stuff of legend, and with good reason. If you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Watch it here, now.