The Purity Culture Dropout Program

From Jessica Bateman's 6-17-25 GUARDIAN article entitled "These Evangelical Men Saved Sex for Marriage – They Weren’t Well Prepared":

Like many people, reaching the age of 40 inspired Matt to do some self-reflection. He had achieved many hallmarks of adulthood: a college degree, a career he enjoyed, and two beloved dogs. But he’d never had a relationship, or even a sexual partner.

This weighed heavy on him; he craved the experience of a deep romantic connection and wondered how it might feel to be in love.

Matt, who is using a pseudonym, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household where sex and masturbation were considered sins. The only message he could ever remember hearing was that it would ruin his life and condemn him to hell.

Though he’d drifted from evangelicalism, sexual shame still clung to him. Around his birthday, he decided to experiment and bought a male sex toy. But after unwrapping the bulky plastic object and fumbling with it, he felt nothing.

“I felt so embarrassed and stupid,” he said. “I’m 40 and I don’t even know how to use this thing.”

Frustrated, he vented in a Facebook group for ex-evangelicals, ranting about how he’d never learned even the basics of sex. It struck a chord. With 30,000 members, the group regularly discusses sexuality and relationships. Members trade stories, comfort each other, and share resources – books, therapists, anything that might help.

One commenter recommended a private group: the Purity Culture Dropout Program, run by sex educator Erica Smith. It offers sex-ed lessons and a safe space for people to unpack fear, compare upbringings, and confront the shame they’ve internalized [...].

Sex therapist Jeremiah Gibson often quips that “you don’t need to have grown up in the church to be fucked over by the church”. Along with his partner Julia Postema, he specialises in working with couples who’ve left high-control religions. The pair also host a podcast, Sexvangelicals, with the tagline: “The sex education the church didn’t want you to have.”

Both were raised in fundamentalist traditions and married – then subsequently divorced – while young. They partly blame purity culture for those relationship breakdowns; none of them had the emotional tools to discuss the crucial components of a life lived together [...].

“Purity culture can really dehumanize both men and women,” added Postema. She says the men she works with are often stuck in a “double-bind” of being told God made them insatiable sexual creatures, but that they must also constantly fight this God-given nature...

To read Bateman's entire article, click HERE. 

VOX.com on the Supreme Court’s New Porn Decision

From Ian Millhiser's 6-27-25 VOX.com article entitled "The Hilarious Implications of the Supreme Court’s New Porn Decision":

Free Speech Coalition makes clear that the era when the courts struck down nearly all laws regulating sexual speech is over. The government will now play a larger role in regulating online content depicting sex.

There is a very good reason, moreover, why pre-Free Speech Coalition courts took a libertarian approach to sexual speech. Although the First Amendment has been part of the Constitution since the late 1700s, it was largely meaningless for most of American history. And the government routinely prosecuted people for saying things, or for producing art, that regulators or law enforcement found objectionable. Under the 1873 Comstock Act and similar state laws, for example, people were routinely jailed for selling erotic literature or nude art, even works that are now widely considered masterpieces.

This regime began to change in the middle of the twentieth century, when the Court started protecting speech of all kinds, including both sexual and political speech. In Roth v. United States (1957), for example, the Court established that sexual speech and art could only be banned if the “average person, applying contemporary community standards” would determine that “the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest.”

Later Supreme Court decisions tweaked this rule, and they also focused on whether the challenged speech or art has “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Speech that does have such value is protected.

All of these legal tests, however, are quite vague. And the question of whether a particular film or photo has serious artistic value is rather obviously in the eye of the beholder. Hence Justice Potter Stewart’s infamous statement that he may not be able to come up with a coherent legal framework to determine what sort of material should be banned, “but I know it when I see it.”

The result was that, for much of the 1970s, the justices literally had to meet in the basement of the Supreme Court to watch pornographic movies that were the subject of prosecutions, in order to make subjective calls about which movies should be protected by the First Amendment.

Those movie days, as described by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong in The Brethren, were thoroughly humiliating experiences. Justice John Marshall Harlan, for example, was nearly blind during many of these screenings, so one of his law clerks had to describe what was happening on the screen to him — often prompting Harlan to explain “By Jove!” or “extraordinary!”

Meanwhile, filmmakers would often try to work within the Court’s “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” framework by including political discussions or similar matters in a movie that was otherwise about sex. According to Woodward and Armstrong, for example, one such film ended with a speech “on the comparative merits of Communist and Western societies.”

The point is that, once the Court decided that some sexual speech is protected by the Constitution, it was extremely difficult to come up with a principled way to distinguish art that is too sexy to be protected by the First Amendment from art that is not. And the Court’s attempts to do so only made a mockery of the justices.

Eventually, the combination of Supreme Court decisions that read the First Amendment broadly, and technologies like the internet that made it very difficult to suppress sexual speech, ushered in an era where pornography is widely available and mostly unregulated.

In upholding the Texas law at issue in Free Speech Coalition, the Court could end this era. But the justices are likely to make their own lives miserable as a result. Texas’s law incorporates many of the Supreme Court’s past pornography decisions, only restricting speech, for example, that “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

Thus, if Texas wants to apply this law to Pornhub, some poor judge will have to watch much of the content on that website to determine if it has literary, artistic, political, or scientific value — and whatever that judge decides, their decision will be appealed to other judges who will have to engage in the same exercise. 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

OPERATION MINDFUCK 2025!

“If thou gaze long into the Deep State, the Deep State will also gaze into thee.”

--Archibald Nietzsche (Friedrich Nietzsche's Slightly Insane Younger Brother)

Here are two recent articles about the current state of Trump's administration that need to be read in conjunction with one another...

First comes an excerpt from Bill Curry's 6-22-25 SALON article entitled "With Strikes on Iran, Trump Has Chosen a Path of Insanity":

Trump needs attention like Dracula needs blood, and the Israel-Iran war, in which the U.S. has now become an active participant, struck at the worst possible time in his feeding cycle. On Saturday, June 14, he’d just staged a disastrous military parade — presumably to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, but actually held in his own honor — at which there was no John Phillips Sousa, no red white and blue bunting and, worst of all, no adoring crowds. There were only camouflaged soldiers in a silent procession closer to the Stations of the Cross than a Fourth of July parade.

Meanwhile, millions of his severest critics were throwing a raucous bash in honor of our democracy. The "No Kings" rallies may have been the biggest protest ever held in America. A palpably joyous celebration, it was everything Trump dreamed his parade would be, and just like his parade, it was all about him, only not in a good way [...].

Trump has long vowed to apply his mythical negotiating skills to the world’s thorniest problems. In Ukraine and Gaza, he failed utterly. Striking a nuclear deal with Iran was his last best chance to shine. Negotiations began in April, which to Trump was a lifetime ago. He needed a fix and would wait no longer.

Last week, Trump proclaimed negotiations the right path to peace with Iran — but hey, things change. A bad parade, a boring G7 and Netanyahu's sudden stardom were all it took for Trump to drop everything he, or rather people in his employ, had worked for. Peace was out. War was in. His mission now was to take the reins from Netanyahu, or rather to foster the false impression he’d held them all along [...].

The myth of Trump the consummate dealmaker dies hard. Cable TV pundits still speculate about his grand strategies. What’s his game? Will he settle for cashiering Iran’s nuclear program, insist on its de facto demilitarization, demand "regime change?" Is he turning away from "America First" toward global engagement? What does he want?

Trump brags that no one knows what he’s thinking and he never makes decisions till “the last second,” especially when there’s a war on. It’s scary to contemplate such derangement, but to understand his policies, we must view them in the context of the mental illness from which they emanate.

In matters of policy, Trump has no future tense, only an ever-aching present need. His "strategy" is to do whatever he thinks will secure him instant adulation. His disease is progressive, in that he is ever more detached from reality.

To read Curry's entire article, click HERE. 

Second, here's an excerpt from Ali Swenson's 5-30-25 Associated Press report entitled "Trump Has Long Warned of a Government 'Deep State.' Now in Power, He's Under Pressure to Expose It":

As he crisscrossed the country in 2024, Donald Trump pledged to supporters that voting him back into the presidency would be “our final battle.”

“With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state,” he said repeatedly on the campaign trail. “We will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all.”

Four months into his second term, Trump has continued to stoke dark theories involving his predecessors and other powerful politicians and attorneys — most recently raising the specter of nefarious intent behind former President Joe Biden's use of an autopen to sign papers. The administration has pledged to reopen investigations and has taken steps to declassify certain documents, including releasing more than 63,000 pages of records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Yet many of Trump’s supporters say it’s not enough.

Some who take him at his word are beginning to get restless as they ask why his administration, which holds the keys to chasing down these alleged government secrets, is denying them the evidence and retribution they expected.

His Justice Department has not yet arrested hordes of “deep state” actors as some of his supporters had hoped it would, even as the president has been posting cryptic videos and memes about Democratic politicians.

“People are tired of not knowing,” conservative commentator Damani Felder said on podcaster Tim Pool’s show last week. “We actually demand answers and real transparency. It’s not that hard to deliver.”

Trump has long promised to dismantle the “deep state” — a supposed secret network of powerful people manipulating government decisions behind the scenes — to build his base of support, said Yotam Ophir, a communications professor at the University at Buffalo.

“He built part of this universe, which at the end of the day is a fictional universe,” he said.

Now that Trump is in power and has stocked loyalists throughout his administration, his supporters expect all to be revealed. Delivering on that is difficult when many of the conspiracies he alleged aren’t real, said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist who studies conspiracy theories at the University of Miami...

To read Swenson's entire article, click HERE. 

If you want to know exactly how we reached this nadir, consider reading my 2022 nonfiction book, OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP, which maps out the anatomy of this ten-year-long campaign of asymmetric warfare directed against the American people by Trump and the cabal of right-wing nutjobs who support him...

PRAISE FOR
OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP

 

"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

"What Would Jello Do?" Part 121

What Would Jello Do? Part 121: Mad King Donnie Trump Amok & A Bridge Too Far...

As the World Burns, Trixie Demands Her Boost!

 

Manly P. Hall on the Summer Solstice & the Myth of the Dying God

The myth of Tammuz and Ishtar is one of the earliest examples of the dying-god allegory, probably antedating 4000 B.C. (See Babylonia and Assyria by Lewis Spence.) The imperfect condition of the tablets upon which the legends are inscribed makes it impossible to secure more than a fragmentary account of the Tammuz rites. Being the esoteric god of the sun, Tammuz did not occupy a position among the first deities venerated by the Babylonians, who for lack of deeper knowledge looked upon him as a god of agriculture or a vegetation spirit. Originally he was described as being one of the guardians of the gates of the underworld. Like many other Savior-Gods, he is referred to as a "shepherd" or "the lord of the shepherd seat." Tammuz occupies the remarkable position of son and husband of Ishtar, the Babylonian and Assyrian Mother-goddess. Ishtar—to whom the planet Venus was sacred—was the most widely venerated deity of the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheon. She was probably identical with Ashteroth, Astarte, and Aphrodite. The story of her descent into the underworld in search presumably for the sacred elixir which alone could restore Tammuz to life is the key to the ritual of her Mysteries. Tammuz, whose annual festival took place just before the summer solstice, died in midsummer in the ancient month which bore his name, and was mourned with elaborate ceremonies. The manner of his death is unknown, but some of the accusations made against Ishtar by Izdubar (Nimrod) would indicate that she, indirectly at least, had contributed to his demise. The resurrection of Tammuz was the occasion of great rejoicing, at which time he was hailed as a "redeemer" of his people.

--Manly P. Hall, An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy: Being an Interpretation of the Secret Teachings concealed within the Rituals, Allegories, and Mysteries of all Ages, 1928 (p. XXXV)

FROM CRYPTOPOLIS TO OUTER SPACE!

Back on Friday the 13th (a coincidental but appropriate date), I appeared on Tarek Al-Ubaidi's popular Austrian podcast, CROPfm, for over three hours. During the first half of the show we discussed my book, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, and the second half was devoted to my recent NEW DAWN MAGAZINE article called "Freemasons from Outer Space." CROPfm is a long-running podcast intended for a German audience. Only half of his listeners can speak English, so every time the host invites me on he immediately loses about fifty percent of his audience! From this, I can only conclude he likes having me on as a guest (this was my third appearance on the show). 

Feel free to listen to the show and learn the bizarre secret origins of such enigmatic short stories as "Cryptopolis" (2012), "Initiation" (2009), "Dr. Apocrypha's Manifesto" (2009), "Bring Me the Head of André Breton!" (2011), "Adventures in the Head Wound" (2024), "Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence" (2001), "The Sheet" (2017), "The Loser" (2020), "The Lemon Thief" (2020), "The Pharmacy" (2020), and "The Detective with the Glass Gun" (2019). I also talk about the time I had coffee with George Clayton Johnson and Dennis Etchison on Ray Bradbury's birthday, among other odd anecdotes.

CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, released by Lethe Press on January 13^th of last year, collects twenty-five short stories published over the course of about twenty-three years, from 2000 to 2022. Many of the stories in this book have Gnostic/hermetic/alchemical/Masonic/Kabbalistic themes. For example, I wrote the title story, “Cryptopolis,” in between undergoing the second and third degrees of Freemasonry. I wrote the ninth story, “Initiation” (originally published by cyberpunk legend Rudy Rucker in his FLURB webzine), right after undergoing the third degree of Freemasonry. “Dr. Apocrypha’s Manifesto” deals with the topic of Freemasonry in less metaphorical ways. “Bring Me the Head of André Breton!” (also published by Rucker) is my absurdist meditation on the connections between UFOlogy and surrealism. If you’re interested in the more outré aspects of JFK assassination theories, you might want to check out “Adventures in the Head Wound," which is dedicated to the memory of Paul Krassner (the late iconoclastic satirist and editor of THE REALIST). The final story in the book, “Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,” deals with the connections between the Kabbalah and quantum physics. Many of these stories emerged directly from dreams. “The Sheet” is an almost scene-by-scene translation of an extremely vivid dream I experienced over twenty years ago. Parts of "Cryptopolis" emerged from a disturbing dream my father experienced when I was a child.

As you can see in the photograph below, even Alice's White Rabbit is flabbergasted by the bizarre contents of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES!   

If you want to check out this epic interview, simply click HERE (the show switches to English about six minutes after the hour)!

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES: 

"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

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

 

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

  

"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   

"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers [...].

"Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."

--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings

WORLD'S FINEST

THE BULWARK on the Right-wing Reaction to the Minnesota Assassin

From Aki Nace's 6-16-25 CBS NEWS report entitled "Vance Boelter, Suspect in Minnesota Lawmaker Shootings, Taken into Custody":

Vance Boelter, the man who authorities believe shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in politically motivated shootings early Saturday morning, is now in custody. He now faces charges of murder and attempted murder.

Law enforcement officials said Boelter, 57, was taken into custody after being located in the woods near his home in Green Isle, in Sibley County, on Sunday night.

Hennepin County court records show Boelter is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder. He is due in court Monday afternoon.

To read the entire report, click HERE. 

In the video below, Tim Miller of THE BULWARK analyzes the unhinged right-wing response to these targeted political assassinations: 

"The suspect, Vance Boelter, impersonated a police officer, arrived in a fake cop vehicle, and executed a horrifying plan that appears clearly politically motivated—targeting Democrats including Governor Tim Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar. But instead of facing this reality, prominent voices on the far right—including Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, Mike Cernovich, and even U.S. Senator Mike Lee—have pushed a conspiracy theory suggesting the killer was somehow motivated by left-wing grievance. Tim breaks down how this false narrative spread like wildfire and what it reveals about the state of right-wing media, social platforms, and our broken political discourse."

The Expectant Father('S DAY) Disinformation Handbook!!!

If you have any desire to understand the intense level of energy that went into the creation of my book, THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK, then all you have to do is study the expression on my face as I bounce up and down on an exercise ball at 3:00 a.m. in a fruitless attempt to instill some much-needed sleep into my newly hatched daughter. 

I must have done something right since she's still around seventeen years later!

Yes, indeed, Happy Father's Day... to ME! If you want to perform a small favor for this particular father, why not buy a copy of THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK? In the pages of THE HANDBOOK, you will find out all about the high weirdness of Origami Babies, the dangers of in utero phone sex, Count Dracula's shocking attitudes regarding child raising, how to use your baby as an assassin, the risks of allowing your fetus in utero internet connection, the growing problem of terrorism in the womb, and the little known fact that Shakespeare created pregnancy, among many other esoteric secrets. THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK is available directly from Madness Heart Press and Amazon.com. (No infants were harmed in the making of this handbook.) 

Wait, I know what you're thinking! Is THE EXPECTANT FATHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK looming in our immediate future? Who the hell knows? Do any of us even have a future? While the rest of us are trying to figure out the answer to that vital question, why not distract yourself by diving into the pages of this extremely bizarre (and surprisingly useful) handbook, whether you're in or out of a family way?!?

By the way, if you want to hear me talking about the genesis of THE HANDBOOK at great length, check out my recent interviews on Steven Snider's THE FARM and Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?

To listen to THE FARM (PART 1), click HERE!

To listen to THE FARM (PART 2), click HERE!

To listen to WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, click HERE!

PRAISE FOR THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK:

"Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can’t recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly."

—JAMES MORROW, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the Ape


"Here it is. THE perfect baby-shower/gender reveal party gift. Forget all the binkies, blankies, cute little onesies, and diaper-service subscriptions. Those are so overdone and boring. Want to make a REAL impact? This book. This book right here [...].

"Well-written, lively, engaging, easy to read, and tons of fun. If I were a truly evil imp with plenty of money, I’d sneak copies into every OB/GYN office and ‘Parenting and Family’ bookstore section in the country."

—CHRISTINE MORGAN, award-winning author of Spermjackers from Hell and Lakehouse Infernal 

Praetorian Guard Security Services

From Adrienne Vogt, Leinz Vales, Rebekah Reiss, Danya Gainor, and Michelle Watson's 6-14-25 CNN article entitled: "Huge Manhunt Underway for Vance Boetler, Suspected of Assassinating Top Minnesota Lawmaker":

A massive manhunt is underway this evening for the suspect in the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and the attempted assassination of another.

State Rep. Melissa Hortman — the top Democrat in the Minnesota House — and her husband were shot and killed early this morning in “what appears to be a politically motivated assassination,” according to Gov. Tim Walz.

Police are searching for 57-year-old Vance Boelter, who is also the suspect in the shooting of Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife. They have undergone surgery and are alive, according to authorities [...].

Boelter works for a security company, Praetorian Guard Security Services, according to Minnesota officials. The company’s website says he serves as the director of security patrols and has had training from people in the US military.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From Tess Owen, Tim Marchman, and Leah Feiger's 6-14-25 WIRED article entitled "Suspect in Minnesota Shooting Linked to Security Company, Evangelical Ministry":

The suspected shooter [...] appears to be the director of security patrols at Praetorian Guard Security Services, a security company [...] servicing the Minneapolis and St. Paul metro areas that he founded with his wife Jenny. The company, which also lists Todd Boelter, a former police officer and the alleged shooter’s cousin, as a security training manager advertises residential security patrols and uniformed security patrols. “We only offer armed security. If you are looking for unarmed guards, please work with another service to meet your needs better,” states the “red lines” section of the company’s website. The website also states that their “guards” wear the “best personal protective equipment money can buy.”

Officials say that the suspect in the shootings had an SUV kitted out with emergency lights, a badge, and a taser. Though it is not yet clear where the suspect obtained materials to allegedly impersonate a police officer, the Praetorian Guard Security Services website states that their guards “drive the same make and model of vehicles that many police departments use in the US. Currently we drive Ford Explorer Utility Vehicles.” According to photographs from the scene, the car towed away by law enforcement was a Ford.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

MY IMMINENT RETURN TO CROPfm!

 

Heads up! On Friday the 13th, I will be appearing on Tarek Al-Ubaidi's popular Austrian podcast, CROPfm, to discuss CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES and related insanity. Most of Al-Ubaidi's shows are in German; however, he also does an occasional English interview from time to time. Friday the 13th will be one of those occasions. Click HERE to listen to the interview LIVE at 10:00 a.m. (PST). The show will switch to English about five or six minutes after the hour. 

 

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES: 

"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

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

 

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

  

"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   

"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers [...].

"Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."

--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings