GASP!!! THE SIGNED LIMITED EDITION OF SPIES & SAUCERS...

...IS STILL ON SALE FOR A FRACTION OF THE COVER PRICE AT PS PUBLISHING!!!  PLEASE CLICK HERE IF YOU WISH TO PURCHASE A COPY!  WARNING:  SPIES & SAUCERS IS NOW AT THE END OF A LIMITED PRINT RUN, SO ONCE THESE COPIES ARE GONE.... 

 

Borderline Shooting

Readers of my book CHAMELEO might be interested to know that Ian David Long--the ex-Marine ostensibly responsible for the November 7, 2018 mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California--trained "at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County before he deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom in 2010, where he experienced combat," according to an article entitled "Here's What We Know About the Ex-Marine Behind the Thousand Oaks Mass Shooting" (which can be found at Taskandpurpose.com, a website devoted to veteran affairs).  

Camp Pendleton, as readers of CHAMELEO will already know, is a nexus point for skullduggery and unconstitutional experimentation on U.S. citizens that keeps cropping up in a variety of different news stories, most of which end tragically.  I have written about several of these stories on this very website (e.g., the murder of Carlos Segovia in September of 2016 and the "accidental" deaths of four Camp Pendleton Marines in November of 2013).  

Of course, Camp Pendleton is located in San Diego, the military town of all military towns, the city that spawned the government-sanctioned harassment still being endured by my friend Dion Fuller (a complex series of events I chronicled in the pages of CHAMELEO).  It's interesting to note that San Diego is often connected to these mass shootings, the Baton Rouge shooter Gavin Long and the YouTube shooter Ismail Aghdam being only two examples.  Loren Coleman, author of the 2004 book THE COPYCAT EFFECT, felt compelled to point out just a couple of these San Diego connections between otherwise unrelated victims of the Clackamas, Oregon shooting in an article on his Twilight Language website back in December of 2012.  You can find that post, entitled "Clackamas-Aurora Syncs and Links," right HERE.  The pattern of mass shootings connected to San Diego is becoming so obvious that even a mainstream reporter, David Hernandez, published a brief article about it in the 5-4-17 edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune.  Hernandez's article, "Motives Behind Previous Mass Shootings in San Diego County," can be read in its entirety HERE. 

Here's another Camp Pendleton connection to recent (apparently random) tragedies:  Just a few days before the Borderline shooting, a former Camp Pendleton Marine named Andrew Urdiales "was found dead [...] in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison in a suspected suicide," according to a 11-6-18 San Diego Union-Tribune article entitled "Serial Killer and Former Camp Pendleton Marine Dies by Suicide on Death Row."  Alex Riggins, the writer of the article, further reports:

"Urdiales’ nine-year killing spree began in 1986, and he carried out four of the killings while enlisted in the Marine Corps and stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego’s North County and Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County, according to prosecutors.

"After he was discharged from the Marines and returned to his hometown in Chicago, he killed a fifth woman while visiting Southern California, and he killed three women in Illinois.

"Among his victims was 31-year-old San Diego resident Maryann Wells, who was killed with a gunshot to the head and dumped in a downtown San Diego alley on Sept. 25, 1988. Urdiales was stationed at Twentynine Palms at the time.

"According to news reports from the time of Urdiales’ 1997 arrest in Illinois, Wells’ murder was not initially linked to a series of other unsolved murders because it did not fit the pattern of the other victims being strangled and dumped in a remote, rural area, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Urdiales was stationed at Camp Pendleton when he took the life of his first victim, 23-year-old Robbin Brandley, who was attacked as she walked to her car in a dimly lit parking lot following a piano concert on Jan. 18, 1986, at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo."

Deeper into the article, Riggins reports the following:

"About 23 hours after [Alex] Urdiales was discovered in the Adjustment Center, a second death row prisoner died of suspected suicide in a different area of the prison.

"Virendra Govin, 51, was found unresponsive in his cell in the North Segregation housing unit around 10:15 p.m. on Saturday and pronounced dead 15 minutes later. He and his brother, Pravin Govin, were each sentenced to death for the 2004 murders of a business rival, two of her teen children and her mother-in-law.

"The suspected suicides of Govin and Urdiales were not believed to be related, according to prison officials."

To read Riggins' entire article, click HERE. 

Five days after the death of Alex Urdiales, yet another Camp Pendleton Marine shot twelve seemingly random people to death at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks before reportedly turning the gun on himself.  Among the dead was 27-year-old Telemachus Orfanos, a Navy veteran who survived the infamous Las Vegas massacre a year before.  I recommend reading Loren Coleman's 11-14-18 blog post entitled "Survived a Mass Shooting, Killed at Another," in which Coleman analyzes the strange pattern of mass shooting survivors dying not long afterwards under equally tragic circumstances.  You can read Coleman's piece right HERE.

IN CONVERSATION WITH TESSA B. DICK: SPIES AND SAUCERS

Heads up!  You only have three days left to buy a signed hardcover of my second book, SPIES AND SAUCERS, at a ridiculously low price from PS PUBLISHING!  Click HERE for more details! 

In the meantime, why not listen to me discussing the genesis of SPIES AND SAUCERS with Tessa B. Dick (author most recently of CONVERSATIONS WITH PHILIP K. DICK and BLADE RUNNER CREATOR).  Over the course of this freewheeling conversation, which originally aired in October of 2014 on Tessa's excellent radio show ANCIENT OF DAYS, we touch on such disparate topics as the secret life of science fiction novelist Curt Siodmak, the OSS, the CIA, the real world basis of such 1950s B-movies as CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN and THE GAMMA PEOPLE, covert mind control experiments conducted by the U.S. government, the dangers of communicating with dead celebrities, Philip K. Dick (naturally), and did I mention SPIES AND SAUCERS?  

Tessa Dick's interview with Yours Truly can be heard by clicking right HERE!

SPIES AND SAUCERS "BLACK FRIDAY" SALE!

Yes, indeed, it's that time of the year again!  PS Publishing (the publisher of my second book, SPIES AND SAUCERS) is now having a "Black Friday" sale that lasts until Monday the 26th.  Included in this sale are ridiculously low-priced signed hardcovers of SPIES AND SAUCERS as well as bargain-priced bundles of PS Publishing's award-winning anthology series POSTSCRIPTS that include hardcover copies of POSTSCRIPTS #30/31:  MEMORYVILLE BLUES, a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore that contains my very bizarre 2013 short story "Selections from The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook," and POSTSCRIPTS #36/37:  THE DRAGONS OF THE NIGHT, which contains my 2016 novelette "The Wedding Photographer."  (It's worth noting that "The Wedding Photographer" received an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in her annual YEAR'S BEST HORROR anthology, as can be seen HERE.  Datlow called the novelette "a charming" and "lovely tribute to Ray Bradbury.")  Also discounted are signed hardcover books by such exemplary writers as Richard Chizmar, Jack Dann, Joe Hill, Stephen King, and Michael Moorcock!  Click HERE for further info!

PRAISE FOR SPIES AND SAUCERS:

"Robert Guffey is a writer of the first rank.  He is more.  He makes strange landscapes and people come alive in ways that remind the reader that, yes, this world is strange.  The three novellas in SPIES AND SAUCERS will shake up your soul and make you laugh, even if you don't want to.  You'll walk in his characters' shoes as they try to cope with exceedingly bent realities, and you'll know why winning and losing are only a part of a much larger and more surreal Weird that has taken over society.  Guffey makes his work look easy, but it isn't.  He's a magician.  He has the ineffable touch."  

--JON RAPPOPORT, author of THE SECRET BEHIND SECRET SOCIETIES and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX

"Robert Guffey’s SPIES AND SAUCERS is an unforgettable experience.  In this book, the three tales are distinct and yet also have clear thematic relationships to one another, all evoking an insightful view of the wonders and the fears of America in the '50s.  They also draw upon a rich array of pop culture, ranging from B-horror movies like THE DEVIL BAT (1940) with Bela Lugosi to Irish folklore and the golden age of science fiction novels.

"These allusions enriched both occasions I’ve read SPIES AND SAUCERS (thankfully I have a hardback, as I’ll be returning to it again in the near future).  At the same time, I don’t believe knowledge of the various films and books to which Guffey refers is necessary, no more so than it is for reading and loving Thomas Pynchon.

"SPIES AND SAUCERS is thoughtful--at times dark, at times darkly humorous--but always enjoyable.

"Along with Cormac McCarthy, Guffey is my favorite modern fiction writer. SPIES AND SAUCERS provides ample proof as to why I feel that way."

--GARY D. RHODES, author of THE PERILS OF MOVIEGOING IN AMERICA

"Robert Guffey’s book SPIES AND SAUCERS presents three novellas about UFOs, Men in Black, strange creatures and even stranger occurrences.  These tales are set in the '50s, but they sound as fresh as any modern story of UFOs and strange creatures.  Reading in bed or right before bed is not recommended for the faint of heart."

--TESSA B. DICK, author of PHILIP K. DICK:  REMEMBERING FIREBRIGHT and MY LIFE ON THE EDGE OF REALITY

A Thanksgiving Prayer (Redux)

A cheery holiday tradition continues!  From William S. Burroughs' spoken word album, DEAD CITY RADIO (produced by Island Records in 1990), comes this classic routine entitled "A Thanksgiving Prayer," which originally appeared in WSB's 1989 short story collection TORNADO ALLEY.  The background music is provided by Frank Denning....

Nigel Turner's THE MEN WHO KILLED KENNEDY (Redux)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:  Nigel Turner's THE MEN WHO KILLED KENNEDY (Episodes 1 through 9)....

 

Episode 1:  "The Coup d'Etat": 

 

 

Episode 2:  "The Forces of Darkness":

 

 

Episode 3:  "The Cover-Up":

 

 

Episode 4:  "The Patsy":

 

 

Episode 5:  "The Witnesses":

 

 

Episode 6:   "The Truth Shall Make You Free":

 

 

Episode 7:  "The Smoking Guns":  

 

 

Episode 8:  "The Love Affair": 

 

 

Episode 9:  "The Guilty Men": 

 

MASONIC FRAME JOB

Recommended reading:  Andrew Patrick's article "Masons and the Holocaust" in the latest issue of THE SCOTTISH RITE JOURNAL (November/December 2018).  Here are the first two paragraphs:

"The persecutions carried out by the Third Reich against Jews and other groups deemed racially 'unworthy' is widely known to educated people throughout the world.  What may be less well known is the fear and suspicion held against Freemasons by the Nazis.

"Many countries have, at various times, sought to suppress or outlaw Freemasonry, usually out of suspicion of them as a 'secret society.'  The Papal States had a condemnation of the Masons in the early 18th century, as did the Ottoman Empire.  In Europe during the 20th Century, both fascist regimes such as Mussolini's Italy and communist regimes such as the Soviet Union outlawed Freemasonry.  Francisco Franco's Nationalist government in Spain was quite brutally repressive of Masons for decades.  But Nazi Germany had a special distrust of them...."

Print copies of THE SCOTTISH RITE JOURNAL are available for purchase at a subterranean Masonic grotto NEAR YOU... or you can just click HERE.

Illuminati Recruiting Scam

NEWS FLASH:  People who tell you they're members of the Illuminati may not be telling you the truth!  Yes, indeed, the next time a total stranger approaches you on a random street corner and offers you membership in an exclusive secret society that theoretically controls the world's banking systems, you might want to think twice before forking over the membership fees.  Click HERE to read a WJBF.com 11-14-18 news report entitled "South Carolina Man Scammed By Fake Illuminati Recruiters."   

“Of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery.” 

--Adam Weishaupt,

founder of the Illuminati 

(the real Illuminati, that is, not the fake one)

THE ANTI-DREAM DRUG

What follows is a brief excerpt from pp. 108-109 of INTERZONE by William S. Burroughs (Penguin Books, 1989):

"Scientists have perfected the anti-dream drug, which is, logically, a synthetic variation on the junk theme....  And the drug is habit forming to a point where one injection can cause lifelong addiction.  If the addict doesn't get his shot every eight hours he dies in convulsions of oversensitivity."

"Like nerve gas."

"Similar.  In short, once you are hooked on the anti-dream drug, you can't get back.  Withdrawal symptoms are fatal.  Users are dependent for their lives on the supply, and at the same time, the source of resistance, contact with the myth that gives each man the ability to live alone and unites him with all other life, is cut off.  He becomes an automaton, an interchangeable quantity in the political and economic equation."

"Is there an antidote?"

"Yes.  More than that, there is a drug that increases the symbolizing faculty.  It's a synthetic variation of telepathine or yageine, the active principle of Bannisteria caapi."

"And where do you come in?" Mary asked.

"Five years ago I made a study of Bannisteria caapi--the Indians called it Yagé, Ayauhuasca, Pilde--in South America, and found out something about the possible synthetic variations.  The symbolizing or artistic faculty that some people are born with--though almost everyone has it to some degree as a child--can be increased a hundred times.  We can all be artists infinitely greater than Shakespeare or Beethoven or Michelangelo.  Because this is possible, the opposite is also possible.  We can be deprived of symbol-making power, a whole dimension excised, reduced to completely rational nonsymbolizing creatures.  Perhaps..."

"Yes?"

"I was wondering whether...  Well, let it go.  We have enough to think about."

Discordianism Meets Ufology!

Recommended Reading:  Adam Gorightly's 11-2-18 article entitled "Discordianism Meets Ufology Part 00004: Were Gray Barker and Jim Moseley Original Discordians?":

"Although their hoax letter writing hijinks occurred nearly a decade before the Early Discordians got busy with similar shenanigans, Gray Barker and Jim Moseley could certainly be considered pranksterish precursors to Greg Hill, Kerry Thornley, RAW [Robert Anton Wilson], et al.

"The most notable Barker-Moseley letter prank was pulled on famed UFO contactee George Adamski with what became known as the Straith Letter Hoax, a party that got started in December 1957 when Barker got his paws on a batch of absconded State Department stationery, and during a weekend of heavy boozing, he and Moseley concocted the Straith Letter out of whole cloth.

"The letter in question—signed by the fictitious R.E. Straith, a member of the State Department’s 'Cultural Exchange Committee'—informed Adamski that his 1952 encounter with Orthon the Venusian in Desert Center, California, had been confirmed by government officials, and Straith encouraged Adamski to drop by the Cultural Exchange Committee’s D.C. offices whenever he was in town...."

To read Gorightly's entire article, click HERE.  

More Stan Lee Nonsense

In case you're interested, here's some more insider information regarding the unique brand of perfidy Stan "the Man" Lee managed to foist off on a gullible public for nearly six decades.  What follows is an extremely revealing excerpt from Buzz Dixon's 11-12-18 article entitled "Stan Lee [1922-2018]."  This piece is well worth reading, and the following excerpt contains several jaw-dropping "Stan the Man" factoids I never even knew (I put those paragraphs in bold):

"For me, one of the highlights of my professional career was to pass Stan in the hallway of Marvel Productions in the early 1980s and to have him recognize me and call me by name.

"I felt I had arrived.

"Stan’s daily involvement with Marvel diminished over the years, first because he moved to California to make deals for Marvel movies and TV shows (not that many at that time), later because he no longer connected with the story telling style Marvel evolved into.

"He formally split off from Marvel in the late 1990s (though retaining a healthy retainer from them) and got involved in a number of questionable ventures.

"Our orbits intersected again during the short lived existence of Stan Lee Media (SLM), ostensibly his effort to create a new brand of superheroes for a new century, in reality a stock manipulation scheme that saw people sentenced to lengthy prison terms and the mastermind behind it fleeing to Brazil.

"Stan, it should be pointed out, was as much a victim as Merrill Lynch in all this, but it also reflects a key shortcoming in his character.

"I had, thanks to the intercession of Mark Evanier, been briefly employed as Stan’s vice-president of creative affairs for SLM.

"From the beginning of our employment, I and most of Stan’s other staff wondered how SLM was supposed to make money, and couldn’t follow the business strategy of Peter Paul, the former lawyer turned convicted drug smuggler who had insinuated himself in Stan’s life.

"Something was rotten in the state of California, and the more one questioned the wisdom of Paul’s strategy, the more likely one was to be shown the door.

"When it became apparent my neck was next on the chopping block, advice from Steve Gerber and several other former Marvel employees helped me secure a nice severance deal. The advice they gave was to approach Stan first before he had to bring the matter up, point out the fit didn’t seem to be working, and allow Stan to fall over himself in his eagerness to settle the matter without any negative confrontation.  Which I did, and which he did, and we both came away happier for it.

"Shortly after that, the company imploded as the stock manipulation became apparent, and Paul’s secondary scheme was revealed to use the same copyright provision Marvel and Stan fought against re the Kirby estate to lay claim to Marvel characters.

"Stan moved on from there to POW! Entertainment, another effort to capitalize on Stan’s celebrity status, and while that company was legit, it did not generate the response they anticipated.

"During that period, however, thousands of missing pages of Marvel artwork was discovered in a storage unit Stan rented.

"The official story was that these pages had been accidentally scooped up when Stan left Marvel’s New York office, but that doesn’t pass the smell test.  Those pages were supposed to be returned to the original artists; selling them as collectibles was an ancillary form of income and one that comics publishers allowed (the art having been transferred to either print film or digital files by that point).

"Another thing that didn’t pass the smell test was the 'lost' original outline for the first Fantastic Four story, a one and a half page document that had been displayed under glass at [the] SLM office.  The story of how it was 'found' seems awfully suspect, and more than a few of us think it was a =ahem!= 'recreation' typed up at a much later date.

"POW! tried promoting him as a still viable, still vital creator, but anyone who had a meeting with him knew how much of his success rested on the talents of his co-creators. They tried promoting him as still current in pop culture, but he was too old and frail to sell that idea.

"They actually tried circulating a 'fake Stan Lee™', an actor hired to go and do a Stan Lee impersonation at local conventions, but that idea quickly died an embarrassing death.

"Eventually POW! and Stan dissolved their formal relationship, and POW! sold out to foreign investors, leaving Stan to his own devices. 

"The man who always feared not having somebody to work for was finally on his own.

"In his latter years, Stan appeared in the news again and again, this time as an elderly man abused by at least some of his caregivers.

"Stan sure could pick ‘em, huh?

"That’s not the sort of publicity anyone deserves to have, much less endure.  The abuse included dragging him around the country to conventions to promote…something.

"Footage of him in a very disoriented state, being told how to sign his own name for autograph hounds who had just paid a hefty fee for same, outraged his fans, even those of us who recognized his complicity in his own misfortune [...].

"It’s impossible for me to dislike Stan.

"Roz Kirby, Jack’s wife, hated him with an unholy passion, but she earned that right.

"Steve Ditko clearly had an axe or three to grind, but he maintained his silence.

"Steve Gerber had his friction points with Stan, but in the end bore him no animosity.

"Another comics pro, when news broke of the discovery of the missing Marvel artwork, shook his head and said with a rueful smile, 'Stan never fails to disappoint, does he?'

"Stan the Man.

"The man who was Marvel."

To read Buzz Dixon's entire article, click HERE.