Masonry Corner

From Steven Masso's 1-23-24 CW39.com report entitled "Suspect in Deadly Shooting Outside of Freemason Lodge May Have Cyst in Brain, Defense Says":

A man charged with murder in connection to a deadly shooting outside of a Freemason lodge in McAllen may have a cyst in his brain, according to his defense team.

Julio Diaz is facing charges of murder and arson, intend to damage place of worship, according to Hidalgo County records. An indictment accused Diaz of fatally shooting Robert Wise on July 10, 2023 [...].

On July 10, 2023, McAllen police were contacted in reference to a man being shot in the face. Officers responded and located the victim, identified as Wise, next to his pickup truck with multiple gunshot wounds, a probable cause affidavit stated.

Surveillance video showed Diaz pull up in black Chevrolet Blazer and fire multiple shots at Wise, the document states. The video showed Diaz holding a handgun in one hand, and an electronic device in another.

“Mr. Diaz then posted a video on his social media (Instagram) account of the murder,” the affidavit states. “In the video on social media, Mr. Wise can be seen getting shot by Mr. Diaz.”

To read the entire report, click HERE.

CRYPTOPOLIS ON GODLESS!

Earlier this morning, GODLESS.com posted the following announcement...

 

𝗪𝗘𝗜𝗥𝗗 𝗗𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗙𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗦𝗬 𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗔𝗡𝗜𝗧𝗬!

Join me in welcoming Robert Guffey to the Godless family with his new Lethe Press collection Cryptopolis and Other Stories!

Let’s get REALLY weird.

Offbeat and wild shit, Cryptopolis and Other Stories is filled with some of the strangest fantasy stories you’ve ever read. All the tales in this collection are guaranteed to make you scratch your head and say, “What the hell is this Guffey guy smoking?”

We’ve been told he smokes love. Peppered with PCP.

You can grab Cryptopolis and Other Stories on Godless TWO DAYS early. So, if you want to get weird with us… pick it up TODAY!

𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗖𝗥𝗬𝗣𝗧𝗢𝗣𝗢𝗟𝗜𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗡𝗢𝗪!

𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝗟𝗘𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦

Cryptopolis and Other Stories by Robert Guffey

Last week, did you tell your best friend why the King of Cryptopolis has gone insane and why he ordered his guards to behead him? Do you know the secret of the black magician Aleister Crowley—how he wrote of the moonchild, an ethereal spirit to be placed in a barren womb? Have you ever heard of Arson Hoover and the Worldwide Church of Appliantology? If you answered no to any of these, you're clearly misinformed about the newest collection of dark and fantastical stories by Robert Guffey. How would you even survive Casual Day at work? When the tattoos begin to pile up on your flesh like unlucky cars drawn to an accident on the freeway, don't come crying to me—I am just the back cover of a book, after all--but look for the answers inside me, inside Guffey's head, which I have chopped off and bound in bytes.

"Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction." - Publishers Weekly

 

GET CRYPTOPOLIS AT A SPECIAL PRICE!

To celebrate the publication of my latest book, Lethe Press is offering CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES for a special price until the end of February! Just click HERE to take advantage of the offer!

QAnon Shaman Updates

From Michael Daly's 1-7-24 DAILY BEAST article entitled "'Qanon Shaman' Demands the FBI Return the Horns He Wore During Riot":

The “QAnon Shaman” has done his time and now wants the government to return the horned fur headdress that made him the most recognizable figure of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“They’re keeping it like it’s evidence,” Jacob Chansley told The Daily Beast. “The case is over, so there’s no reason for them to continue holding onto it” [...].

The whole world saw [Chansley] sitting bare-chested in his headdress at the dais where Vice President Mike Pence had been preparing to preside over the peaceful transition of power less than an hour before. Chansley took selfies and wrote a note to Pence.

“It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”

That message can only be seen as threatening given Chansley’s earlier declaration online: “We shall have no real hope to survive the enemies arrayed against us until we hang the traitors lurking among us.”

He would not be charged with personally engaging in violence, but he departed the Capitol as an icon of an uprising linked to five deaths and assaults on 174 police officers. The pre-sentencing memo filed by his attorney noted that images of him “have become to January 6 what the Swoosh is to Nike” [...].

In the meantime, Chansley has a website hawking $30 T-shirts stenciled with images of what he calls himself now: “America’s Shaman.”

He is, of course, wearing the iconic headdress, complete with horns.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Summer Concepcion's 11-13-23 NBC News article entitled "'QAnon Shaman' Who Stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 Files Paperwork to Run for Congress":

Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man who gained notoriety as the “QAnon Shaman” who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed paperwork to run for Congress as a Libertarian candidate in the battleground state’s 8th Congressional District.

Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., announced last month that she won’t seek re-election.

Chansley stood out among the Capitol rioters by appearing shirtless with face paint, wearing a furry headdress with horns and carrying a U.S. flag affixed to a spear and a bullhorn.

Chansley pleaded guilty to a single count of felony obstruction of an official proceeding [...].

At a hearing, his original lawyer, Albert Watkins, said Chansley no longer wanted to be known as the “QAnon Shaman.” At his sentencing hearing, Chansley expressed remorse for his actions, which he called “indefensible.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

CRYPTOPOLIS HAS ARRIVED!

Today marks the publication date of my new book, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, courtesy of Lethe Press. You can order the book RIGHT HERE!

Last week, did you tell your best friend why the King of Cryptopolis has gone insane and why he ordered his guards to behead him? Do you know the secret of the black magician Aleister Crowley—how he wrote of the moonchild, an ethereal spirit to be placed in a barren womb? Have you ever heard of Arson Hoover and the Worldwide Church of Appliantology? If you answered no to any of these, you're clearly misinformed about the newest collection of dark and fantastical stories by Robert Guffey. How would you even survive Casual Day at work? When the tattoos begin to pile up on your flesh like unlucky cars drawn to an accident on the freeway, don't come crying to me—I am just the back cover of a book, after all--but look for the answers inside me, inside Guffey's head, which I have chopped off and bound in paper.

"The stories in Cryptopolis feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany, with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and totally worth the trip."

--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

 

"If you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis. I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection. Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."  

 

--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

 

"Once upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification; they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!" 

--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter

 

"Guffey brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs, war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction."

--Publishers Weekly

Robert Kagan on the "Increasingly Inevitable" Trump Dictatorship

What follow are relevant excerpts from Robert Kagan's 11-30-23 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending.":

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence. The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates, much ballyhooed by such political sages as Karl Rove, will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants [...].

The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor [...].

Having answered the question of whether Trump can win, we can now turn to the most urgent question: Will his presidency turn into a dictatorship? The odds are, again, pretty good [...].

Trump will not be the only person seeking revenge. His administration will be filled with people with enemies’ lists of their own, a determined cadre of “vetted” officials who will see it as their sole, presidentially authorized mission to “root out” those in the government who cannot be trusted. Many will simply be fired, but others will be subject to career-destroying investigations. The Trump administration will be filled with people who will not need explicit instruction from Trump, any more than Hitler’s local gauleiters needed instruction. In such circumstances, people “work toward the Führer,” which is to say, they anticipate his desires and seek favor through acts they think will make him happy, thereby enhancing their own influence and power in the process [...].

According to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), there is a whole cabal determined to undermine American security, a “Uniparty” of elites made up of “neoconservatives on the right” and “liberal globalists on the left” who are not true Americans and therefore do not have the true interests of America at heart. Can such “anti-American” behavior be criminalized? It has in the past and can be again.

So, the Trump administration will have many avenues to persecute its enemies, real and perceived. Think of all the laws now on the books that give the federal government enormous power to surveil people for possible links to terrorism, a dangerously flexible term, not to mention all the usual opportunities to investigate people for alleged tax evasion or violation of foreign agent registration laws [...].

And who will stop the improper investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s many enemies? Will Congress? A Republican Congress will be busy conducting its own inquiries, using its powers to subpoena people, accusing them of all kinds of crimes, just as it does now. Will it matter if the charges are groundless? And of course in some cases they will be true, which will lend even greater validity to a wider probe of political enemies.

Will Fox News defend them, or will it instead just amplify the accusations? The American press corps will remain divided as it is today, between those organizations catering to Trump and his audience and those that do not. But in a regime where the ruler has declared the news media to be “enemies of the state,” the press will find itself under significant and constant pressure. Media owners will discover that a hostile and unbridled president can make their lives unpleasant in all sorts of ways.

Indeed, who will stand up for anyone accused in the public arena, besides their lawyers? In a Trump presidency, the courage it will take to stand up for them will be no less than the courage it will take to stand up to Trump himself. How many will risk their own careers to defend others? In a nation congenitally suspicious of government, who will stick up for the rights of former officials who become targets of Trump’s Justice Department? There will be ample precedents for those seeking to justify the persecution. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, the Wilson administration shut down newspapers and magazines critical of the war; Franklin D. Roosevelt rounded up Japanese Americans and placed them in camps. We will pay the price for every transgression ever committed against the laws designed to protect individual rights and freedoms.

How will Americans respond to the first signs of a regime of political persecution? Will they rise up in outrage? Don’t count on it. Those who found no reason to oppose Trump in the primaries and no reason to oppose him in the general are unlikely to experience a sudden awakening when some former Trump-adjacent official such as [Mark] Milley finds himself under investigation for goodness knows what. They will know only that Justice Department prosecutors, the IRS, the FBI and several congressional committees are looking into it. And who is to say that those being hounded are not in fact tax cheaters, or Chinese spies, or perverts, or whatever they might be accused of? Will the great body of Americans even recognize these accusations as persecution and the first stage of shutting down opposition to Trump across the country?

The Trump dictatorship will not be a communist tyranny, where almost everyone feels the oppression and has their lives shaped by it. In conservative, anti-liberal tyrannies, ordinary people face all kinds of limitations on their freedoms, but it is a problem for them only to the degree that they value those freedoms, and many people do not. The fact that this tyranny will depend entirely on the whims of one man will mean that Americans’ rights will be conditional rather than guaranteed. But if most Americans can go about their daily business, they might not care, just as many Russians and Hungarians do not care [...].

Americans might take to the streets. In fact, it is likely that many people will engage in protests against the new regime, perhaps even before it has had a chance to prove itself deserving of them. But then what? Even in his first term, Trump and his advisers on more than one occasion discussed invoking the Insurrection Act. No less a defender of American democracy than George H.W. Bush invoked the act to deal with the Los Angeles riots in 1992. It is hard to imagine Trump not invoking it should “the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs” take to the streets. One suspects he will relish the opportunity.

And who will stop him? His own handpicked military advisers? That seems unlikely. He could make retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if he wanted, and it is unlikely a Republican Senate would decline to confirm. Does anyone think military leaders will disobey commands from their duly elected, constitutionally authorized, commander in chief? Do we even want the military to have to make that call? There is every reason to believe that active-duty troops and reservists are likely to be disproportionately more sympathetic to a newly reelected President Trump than to the “Radical Left Thugs” supposedly causing mayhem in the streets of their towns and cities. Those who hope to be saved by a U.S. military devoted to the protection of the Constitution are living in a fantasyland [...].

What is certain, however, is that the odds of the United States falling into dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles to it have been cleared and only a few are left [...].

A paralyzing psychology of appeasement has also been at work. At each stage, the price of stopping Trump has risen higher and higher [...].

We are closer to that point today than we have ever been, yet we continue to drift toward dictatorship, still hoping for some intervention that will allow us to escape the consequences of our collective cowardice, our complacent, willful ignorance and, above all, our lack of any deep commitment to liberal democracy.

To read Kagan's entire article, click HERE.

ANOTHER HUMOR VIRUS PROOF

In November of 2017, I published a novel entitled UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES, which was about a young stand-up comedian who must adapt as best he can to an apocalyptic virus that destroys only the humor centers of the brain. That novel seems to grow more and more prescient with each passing day.

Here's an excerpt from Jules Roscoe's 1-5-24 VICE article entitled "Fired Comedian Ordered to Get Day Job Back After Jokes Ruled 'Simply Funny'" (hat tip to Nick Mamatas for bringing this article to my attention):

A reporter who was fired last year when his employer found clips of his standup comedy online must be reinstated because his jokes are funny, a third-party arbitrator has ruled.

The arbitrator also found that his comedy clips, which covered topics including 9/11, Israel, and oral sex, could violate Philadelphia-based NPR member station WHYY’s social media policy and must be removed. The reporter, Jad Sleiman, said this raises concerns about the boundaries of remote work.

“I kind of couldn’t believe it,” said Sleiman, who wrote on Instagram that he’s been pursuing comedy full-time since his firing. “The one thing I’ve been told about arbitration is they usually split the baby, so nobody gets everything they want. But what’s been on my side this whole time is the case against me has just been such bullshit.”

Sleiman had spent five years as a reporter at The Pulse, a health and science radio broadcast produced by WHYY. However, after senior management found clips of his standup comedy routines that he had posted on Instagram—clips the company alleged were “egregious” with “sexual connotations, racial connotations, and misogynistic information,” according to the arbitration case document Sleiman posted online—he was fired last January.

“They cut off my health insurance same day, despite the fact that they know I have multiple sclerosis and rely on very expensive drugs to walk,” Sleiman told Motherboard on Wednesday. “They also went and deleted all my work from the site, every single possible clip I could try to use to get a job.”

Sleiman’s comedy focused on his “experiences as an Arab American, raised in a Muslim family, his experience in the U.S. Marine Corps, and his reporting while he was in the Middle East,” including embedding with Syrian opposition fighters and covering ISIS in Iraq, the arbitration document states. It includes written samples of nine jokes that Sleiman had posted as clips on Instagram (which, as part of the arbitration agreement, he has since removed from his page). One joke is listed with the title, “Kind of Racist.”

“I work at one of these places that’s so woke it’s kinda racist,” the joke reads in part. “Like this lady asked my boss, she’s like ‘Yo, does Jad consider himself a person of color?’ because she was making a list of us. Fucking hell? Sick, alright. I get to be in this lady’s brown dude Pokédex.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Would you like to see more "Humor Virus" Proofs? If so, you can find them in this CRYPTOPOST and this CRYPTOPOST and this CRYPTOPOST!

PRAISE FOR

UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES

“By turns mystical and ashcan-real, insanely funny and grimly ghastly, Guffey’s novel cuts a zigzag trail through conventionality as it follows Elliot Greeley in his half-serious, half jesting quest for some deeper meaning to existence. If you build your life on laughs, what happens when the laughs disappear? Kissing cousin to Max Barry’s novel Lexicon, about killer language, and to Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet, about language killed, Guffey’s standup debut is standout speculative fiction.”

--Paul DiFilippo, Locus 

“Taps into the cultural zeitgeist…. A nihilistic satire that takes the idea that death is easy and comedy is hard to a whole new level.”

--Kirkus Reviews 

“Guffey’s debut takes full advantage of an absurd, unexpected premise, delivering one of the strangest dystopian novels in a year filled with them.”

--B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog 

“Guffey’s sardonic, cleverly written comedic debut relies heavily on absurd synchronicity, bold characterization, and heavy irony to make its points about the apocalyptic nature of American humorlessness.”

--Publishers Weekly 

“Not only a novel unique to this [political] moment, but one that is to comedy what Catch-22 was to war. One of the great books of the year.”

--Adam-Troy Castro, Sci Fi Magazine 

“A playful amalgam of Andy Kaufman and Philip K. Dick by way of Shaun of the Dead.”

--Damien Lincoln Ober, author of Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America 

“This satirical tale explores the role of comedy in maintaining a healthy democracy…. A clever concept.”

--Kirkus Reviews

1/6

READ

OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP

BY

ROBERT GUFFEY

 

"It's great."

--Marc Maron, WTF Podcast

"Voltaire suggested that those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities, and QAnon provided the practical demonstration. Robert Guffey’s razor-sharp postings illuminate how a collage of Shaver mysteries, Discordian prankster politics and recreational conspiracy theory played out as dissociative American fugue. Jaw-dropping and essential."

—Alan Moore, author of V for Vendetta and Watchmen

"One of the most difficult aspects of confronting QAnon conspiracism is finding the time and resolve to delve into its ever-expanding network of self-reinforcing connections and concepts. Robert Guffey does that work for you in OPERATION MINDFUCK, a codex to madness and a critical examination of how a massive fraction of our culture has imbibed a counter-reality. Guffey also explores underground sources lost on many mainstream historians, bringing us into an (occasionally ingenious) netherworld of outsider thought forms. Guffey is the Ernest Shackleton of paranoia—and one hopes his journey will result in a happier ending."

—Mitch Horowitz, PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and Uncertain Places

"It's practically a guide to your character to discover whether you find this expose of possibly the stupidest political movement in human history funny, alarming, or infuriating.... Highly recommended."

—Richard Smoley, author of Supernatural: Writings on an Unknown History and How God Became God

"OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP by Robert Guffey tackles the conspiracy theories Q draws from, the history of the Q phenomenon, and the eventual attempts by mobs at least partially influenced by Q, and certainly influenced by Donald Trump, to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. The book is well-researched, with a full Bibliography of notes that reference and identify each quote from each source that Guffey cites. Guffey, additionally, has a long background studying conspiracy theories and their origins [...]. Guffey is not a lightweight."

—Steve Henn, author of And God Said Let There Be Evolution

"Whether QAnon is a religion, a cult, a joke, a political movement, or just an online game gone awry, Robert Guffey's OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP is his attempt to figure it all out. Guffey's pedigree in this area is unmatched [...]. Throughout OPERATION MINDFUCK, Guffey follows Theodore Sturgeon's advice he quoted in his book CHAMELEO: 'Always ask the next question.'"

—Roy Christopher, author of Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future

 

 "[Guffey's] expertise shines through in every chapter of this book. Operation Mindfuck: QAnon and the Cult of Donald Trump is not only a well written and well researched look into the abyss of bullshit known as QAnon, but it is also very funny and quite sad at the same time—an interesting, entertaining, and sometimes frightening read."

 

--Razorcake 

"If you are still dazed from this [QAnon] business, then Robert Guffey has written a book just for you. In readable yet well researched fashion, he lays it all out: where it began, who, why, how. He can’t make it go away for you—or me, for that matter—but he can make the whole bizarre business a bit less confusing... [T]his book is what you need. Get your fire lit, your cup of coffee (or something far stronger), curl up (in fetal position, if necessary), and prepare to learn."

 

--Seattle Book Mama

IS ANOTHER WORLD WATCHING?

Here's the first book I finished reading in 2024...

"Hallucination, however common it may be, is less common, far less common, than ignorance. There are in the Universe, any sensible man knows, far more things that I have never seen than things which I have imagined were there and weren't there."

--Gerald Heard, IS ANOTHER WORLD WATCHING?, 1953

"But, though the process has immensely accelerated in our generation, it has been going on for at least twenty-five centuries, to our certain knowledge. This kind of thing has not been sprung on us. Moreover, we have had plenty of time to notice our reaction to this sort of experience. We go through three phases with a monotonous and rather discouraging regularity.


"First, we say 'What rot, what mischievous nonsense! Such a fraud (the reporter of the fact we find detestable because indigestible) should be shut up. It is as dangerous as it is repulsively ridiculous!' Next we begin to joke about it: the thing, we own, has something of the lewdly funny about it, but of course it is really only a joke with which to tease and upset the pompous. Then one day, without anyone noting it, the whole thing has become obvious, banal, boring, a commonplace only noted to show how hopelessly backward, silly and prejudiced our elders were. The process is over for the time being. We have adjusted. But we have learnt nothing, nothing about ourselves. And when the next shock comes, the next breakthrough of unaccepted fact, we react once more in the same way."

--Gerald Heard, IS ANOTHER WORLD WATCHING?, 1953

Theme Music for 2024!

Several years ago, in December of 2017, it was suggested to me by a knowledgeable colleague (known to a select few as "The Director of Miscellaneous") that the following three songs represented the most appropriate theme music for that coming year. In retrospect, I now realize his recommendations were somewhat premature. I suspect this trio of songs will fit the year 2024 much more comfortably. Remember, kids: "BUY LOW... SELL HIGH...."

SUN CITY GIRLS:  "COOKING WITH SATAN"

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART:  "APES-MA"

EX-BLANK-EX:  "YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT"

ATTACK OF THE WIDOW MAKER

Last New Year's Eve, only a few minutes after the stroke of midnight, a massive eucalyptus tree (referred to by some arborists as the "widow maker" tree) toppled outside our bedroom window with no warning, hitting the precise spot where we normally park our car... so 2024 has already gotten off to a somewhat less dramatic start than 2023...