Friday, September 23, 2016

Quote of the Day (or) Ode to Autumn

"The autumn months are never a calm time in America. Back to Work, Back to Football Practice, etc.... Autumn is a very Traditional period, a time of strong Rituals and the celebrating of strange annual holidays like Halloween and Satanism and the fateful Harvest Moon, which can have ominous implications for some people. 

"Autumn is always a time of Fear and Greed and Hoarding for the winter coming on. Debt collectors are active on old people and fleece the weak and helpless. They want to lay in enough cash to weather the known horrors of January and February. There is always a rash of kidnapping and abductions of schoolchildren in the football months. Preteens of both sexes are traditionally seized and grabbed off the streets by gangs of organized perverts who traditionally give them as Christmas gifts to each other to be personal sex slaves and playthings. 

"Most of these things are obviously Wrong and Evil and Ugly — but at least they are Traditional. They will happen. Your driveway will ice over, your furnace will blow up, and you will be rammed in traffic by an uninsured driver in a stolen car. 

"But what the hell? That's why we have Insurance, eh? And the Inevitability of these nightmares is what makes them so reassuring. Life will go on, for good or ill. But some things are forever, right? The structure may be a little Crooked, but the foundations are still strong and unshakable. 

"Ho ho. Think again, buster. Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and uncertainty that comes with once-reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in.... There is a Presidential Election, right on schedule, but somehow there is no President. A new Congress is elected, like always, but somehow there is no real Congress at all — not as we knew it, anyway, and whatever passes for Congress will be as helpless and weak as whoever has to pass for the 'New President.'" 

--Hunter S. Thompson, Hey Rube, 11-20-00

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Mysterious Murder of a Camp Pendleton Marine

While bombs are alternately being detonated and defused in New York, and chaos reigns in North Carolina in the wake of the police shooting of Keith L. Scott (Note:  I recommend reading Tracy Twyman's autumnal equinox blog post regarding the hermetic symbolism exhibited in the media coverage of the July 2016 police shooting of Philando Castile), no one is paying attention to the mysterious murder of a Camp Pendleton marine that occurred only three days ago in Los Angeles.

Here are relevant excerpts from Matt Hamilton and Richard Winton's 9-19-16 Los Angeles Times article entitled "A Mystery for Police After 19-year-old Marine Is Shot in South L.A.:  'He's Fighting for His Life'":

"A 19-year-old Marine from Camp Pendleton has been hospitalized in grave condition after he was shot this weekend in South Los Angeles, authorities said.

"The teen, identified by his family as Carlos Segovia, was found about 11:35 p.m. Friday slumped over and unconscious in a Dodge Charger in the 2100 block of 31st Street, according to Capt. Peter Whittingham of the Los Angeles Police Department.

"Segovia left the military base near San Diego on Friday and was visiting friends and family for the weekend in South L.A., according to Claudia Perez, a family friend who said she treats him like her child.

"Segovia wrapped up visiting his girlfriend Friday and was about to drive to Perez’s home, where he usually stays, when he was struck by gunfire, she said.

"'He was on his way to my house,' Perez said via telephone from Segovia’s room at California Hospital Medical Center. 'He texted my son that he was bringing pizza home. He never made it.'

"Police notified the U.S. Marine Corps, which in turn notified Segovia’s family about the shooting. Whittingham said he is unlikely to survive and has little to no brain function [...].

"No suspect has been identified in the shooting. Police said Segovia has no connections to gangs or other activity that would seem to make him a likely target of gun violence.

"'At this point, it’s absolutely a mystery,' Whittingham said. 'Like so many cases in South L.A., we have nothing to go on at this point.'

"Born in El Salvador, Segovia came to the U.S. with his mother. Both are U.S. citizens, Perez said.
After finishing high school, Segovia joined the Marines about six months ago.

"He was known around his community for his volunteering and service work. Perez said he led a youth group called Teen Project, which aimed to motivate high school students to finish school and 'go the right way in life.' He also worked at LA on Cloud 9, a nonprofit run by Perez that she said provides services to homeless people and to animals [...].

"[Perez] pleaded with members of the public to come forward with information about the killing.

"'They shot a Marine. They shot a community leader,' Perez said. 'It was not gang-on-gang violence like you normally see on South L.A. streets. He left a base to see his family and was murdered in the streets.'"

To read Hamilton and Winton's entire article, click HERE

What follow are brief excerpts from a 9-21-16 update on the Segovia shooting from NBCLosAngeles.com:

"Lance Cpl. Carlos Segovia Lopez died at a hospital Monday night, according to the coroner's office. The Marine had been on life support since he was found Friday night slumped over in the driver's seat of his car in South Los Angeles.

"The Los Angeles Police Department announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case.

"No suspects were identified, but now investigators think the motive may have been a result of Lopez witnessing potentially illegal activity."
  
Was the "potentially illegal activity" mentioned above witnessed in the streets of South L.A. or on the base at Camp Pendleton?  Which scenario is more likely?  Readers of Chameleo will know that the proper answer to that question is counter-intuitive....

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Transcending Reality

Despite suffering from a debilitating head cold, I successfully completed my first television interview yesterday.  I once saw an interview with Patton Oswalt in which the comedian commented on a paranormal phenomenon he calls "stage health."  "Stage health" is the exact opposite of stage fright.  Despite being sick, one's symptoms inexplicably vanish during the small window required to get the job done, whatever the job happens to be.  In this case I managed to tape an hour-long episode of a new television show called Transcending Reality (produced by Ivolve TV).  Imagine if The View revolved around Weird Shit/High Strangeness and you would have Transcending Reality.  The show is hosted by Lorien Fenton, Melinda Leslie (who plays an important role in my book Chameleo), Miesha Johnston, and Skye.  I'm told the first episode will debut early in November.  Watch for it!

Here I am in the Green Room waiting for the interview to begin...


And here's my McLuhanesque simulacrum....  


Friday, September 16, 2016

"What's At the End of Main Street?" in NEW DAWN #158

The most recent issue of New Dawn Magazine (No. 158, September/October 2016) includes Part One of my epic three-part series entitled "What's At the End of Main Street?:  The Struggle Between the Artificial and the Real in Recent Gnostic Cinema," in which I analyze key examples of "Gnostic Cinema" (i.e., films that explore the illusory nature of reality within a fictional framework) ranging from Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. in 1924 to Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook in 2014.  New Dawn, of course, is available from any well-stocked newsstand NEAR YOU; however, if you wish to summon a copy through the aether, feel free to order the latest issue by clicking HERE.  

By the way, this particular issue also includes an illuminating article by Richard Smoley (author of the recent book, How God Became God) entitled "The Mystery of the Seven Seals:  Seven Spheres, Planetary Archons, & Corruption on High," which begins as follows:

"The New Testament is probably the most widely read book in the world.  And yet it is also a book that is mysterious, and, at best, not fully understood.  In some cases, this is because what the churches teach today no longer corresponds with what the New Testament says.  This is the case with the nature and person of Jesus.  

"In other instances, it is not so much that the teaching has been changed, but lost completely.

"This is true of the early Christian view of cosmology.  It is peppered throughout the New Testament but has been completely overlooked or forgotten.  The result is that many parts of the text are baffling or incomprehensible today."
 
Smoley's article is also worth the price of admission....

IN OTHER NEWS Radio Archives

Heads up:  In case you missed my recent appearance on WBAI in New York (on Geoff Brady's In Other News), you can listen to the broadcast in its entirety by clicking HERE

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

IN OTHER NEWS

Attention, New York!  I will be appearing on Geoff Brady's radio show, In Other News, on WBAI in New York on Monday, September 12th from 11:00 P.M. to midnight (EST).  If you're in the area, please pass the word along to any fellow Chameleo readers... or anyone who might be interested in hearing about this strange but true story of invisible spies, heroin addiction, and Homeland Security.  Mahalo!

Monday, September 5, 2016

CRYPTOSCATOLOGY ON CONSPIRINORMAL: PHANTOM CLOWNS, LONE NUTS, AND MAGIC SPACE PUSSIES

Last night marked my return to Adam Sayne's Conspiranormal podcast.  Unlike the vast majority of interviews I've done during the past few months regarding my book, Chameleo, this conversation centers mainly on my first book, Cryptoscatology:  Conspiracy Theory as Art Form, but also touches on Spies & Saucers (my second book), recent Phantom Clown sightings in South Carolina, David Paulides' fascinating Missing 411 investigation, the loopy theory that Stephen King shot John Lennon, Freemasonry, Albert Pike, the origins of the Ku Klux Klan, Columbine, Donald Trump, the last days of Manly P. Hall, Stranger Things, the Montauk Project, the accusation that Mark Hamill is the surgically-altered progeny of Project Paperclip Nazi scientists, a variety of lone nut assassins, swimming pools filled with chocolate, and magic space pussies.  Please click HERE to listen to this freewheeling discussion, which runs well over two hours long.

All are welcome... all are welcome....


One of the several chapters of Cryptoscatology under discussion during this interview is Chapter Five:  "Science Fiction as Manipulation:  SF's Intersection with the Intelligence Community."  To whet your appetite, here's a brief excerpt from that chapter:



Undoubtedly, [H.G.] Wells was the first writer to use science fiction as a vehicle for intelligence propaganda, but not the last.  One of the most interesting examples is the case of Paul Linebarger, who wrote science fiction under the name Cordwainer Smith.  He was a leading expert in psychological warfare during the 1950s and ‘60s, and was an advisor to President Kennedy.  He wrote the book on psychological warfare—literally.  Its title is Psychological Warfare and was published by Combat Forces Press in Washington, D.C. just after World War II.  In this book Linebarger writes:  "Almost all the best propagandists of almost all modern powers have been, to a greater or less degree, literary personalities.  The artistic and cultural aspect of writing is readily converted to propaganda usage….  Though literary men have converted their writing to propaganda purposes, few of them have gone on to define the characteristics of a specific conversionary literature or to compile canons of literary style applicable to the propaganda field.  The contributions may lie in the future" (290)

That was in 1948.  In 1950 he published his first short story “Scanners Live in Vain” in Fantasy Book, which was followed by at least twenty-five more stories plus two full-length novels.  Linebarger admitted to his editor Frederick Pohl that there were numerous codes hidden in his stories (Smith, The Instrumentality of Mankind xvi).  These are known in the advertising world as “phonetic embeds”—strange double-entendres, anagrams, and deliberate typos intended to plant suggestions in the reader’s mind.  It would probably take a computer to decipher all the codes in Linebarger’s stories, but some of them can indeed be uncovered if one is diligent enough.

I mentioned earlier that Linebarger was an advisor to President Kennedy.  In light of that fact it’s interesting to note the following codes.  Only a few months after Kennedy’s death, Linebarger published a novel called Quest of the Three Worlds that was chock-filled with phonetic embeds.  On pages 69 and 74 you’ll find that the first letter of each sentence spells out “Kennedy shot,” and “Oswald shot too.”  Perhaps this would be unremarkable in itself, but the kicker is this:  The paragraph spelling out Oswald’s name is entirely about hypnotism.  The main character is taught to shoot a gun by hypnotism, and is then hypnotized into learning about psychological warfare with the aid of a “neuro-electric learning helmet,” a phrase that sounds somewhat like “neuro-linguistic programming.”  Near the end of the book Linebarger writes about a secret council of “perfect ones” who “know everything” and live in a well-guarded Egyptian setting.  Linebarger calls this group The Instrumentality.  They sound very similar to The Round Table Group, or the High Cabal discussed by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty in his book JFK.[1]   Prouty, by the way, was also an advisor to Kennedy.

This is pretty strange stuff for a Presidential advisor to be writing only a few weeks after an assassination.  Three years later, in 1966, Linebarger died of a heart attack at the relatively young age of fifty-three.  In that same year a dozen people tied in with the Kennedy assassination died mysteriously:
           
--Judge Joe Brown, who presided over Jack Ruby’s trial, died of a heart attack.

--Earlene Roberts, Oswald’s landlady, died of a heart attack.

--Hank Suydam, who was in charge of all the JFK stories at Life magazine, died of a heart attack.

--Albert Bogard, a car salesman who claimed Oswald had taken him on a wild car ride only two weeks before the assassination, committed suicide.

--William Pitzer, the JFK autopsy photographer, committed suicide.

--Karen Carlin, who worked at Jack Ruby’s nightclub and was the last to talk to Ruby before the murder of Oswald, died of a fatal gunshot wound.

--Marilyn Walle, a woman who worked as a dancer at Ruby’s nightclub, died of a fatal gunshot wound.

--Lee Bowers, Jr., the man who saw the real shooters behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll, died in a car accident.

--James Worrell, Jr., who saw a man running out of the back of the Texas School Book Depository, died in a car accident.

--Capt. Frank Martin, a Dallas police captain who watched Oswald get shot, died of cancer.

--Jimmy Levens, a nightclub owner who hired Ruby employees, died of natural causes.

--Clarence Oliver, a D.A. investigator who worked on Ruby’s case, died of “unknown” causes (Marrs 560).

In light of this litany of death, is it too farfetched to think that Linebarger was bumped off for revealing a little too much about the assassination in his fiction?  In a world engineered by professional science fiction writers like H.G. Wells and Linebarger himself, one wonders if anything is too farfetched.


[1] See also David Ratcliffe’s interview with Col. Prouty titled “The Secret Team,” which can be heard on YouTube HERE.