Targeted Neuroplasticity Training

From Karla Lant's 5-2-17 Futurism article entitled "DARPA Is Planning to Hack the Human Brain to Let Us 'Upload' Skills":

"In March 2016, DARPA — the U.S. military’s 'mad science' branch — announced their Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program. The TNT program aims to explore various safe neurostimulation methods for activating synaptic plasticity, which is the brain’s ability to alter the connecting points between neurons — a requirement for learning. DARPA hopes that building up that ability by subjecting the nervous system to a kind of workout regimen will enable the brain to learn more quickly.

"The ideal end benefit for this kind of breakthrough would be downloadable learning. Rather than needing to learn, for example, a new language through rigorous study and practice over a long period of time, we could basically 'download' the knowledge after putting our minds into a highly receptive, neuroplastic state. Clearly, this kind of research would benefit anyone, but urgent military missions can succeed or fail based on the timing. In those situations, a faster way to train personnel would be a tremendous boon."

To read Lant's entire article, click HERE.

The War Against Literature (and History Itself) Continues Unabated...

From Alison Flood's 2-12-18 Guardian article entitled "'Hurtful' Harper Lee and Mark Twain Dropped from Minnesota Curriculum":

"A school district in Minnesota has pulled To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its curriculum, arguing that the classic novels’ use of racial slurs risked students being 'humiliated or marginalised' [...].

"According to [the local newspaper] the Bemidji Pioneer, there was no specific complaint from students about the titles [emphasis added--RG], but their use 'created an uncomfortable atmosphere' in the classroom."

To read Flood's entire article, click HERE. 

For supplementary material regarding the ongoing War Against the Imagination, I highly recommend reading my 2014 article entitled "The War Against the Imagination:  How to Teach in a System Designed to Fail," which can be found on Jon Rappoport's website HERE.

Trump's Secret War Powers Memo

What follows is the first paragraph of Spencer Ackerman's 2-20-18 Daily Beast article entitled "What's Inside Trump's Secret War Powers Memo?":

"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson informed a senator in a recently-revealed letter that President Trump considers himself to possess inherent constitutional authority to launch military action without any act of Congress, a sweeping assertion that appears to resurrect from the early George W. Bush years the most imperial notions of the presidency."

To read the rest of Ackerman's article, click HERE.

More on the Parkland Shooting

Head on over to womenintheworld.com, scroll down to the bottom of Kyle Jones' 2-21-18 article entitled "Teacher Who Took a Bullet Saving Students Shares Firsthand Account of Florida Shooting," and click on the interview with Stacy Lippel, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School creative writing teacher who offers a very specific description of the Parkland Shooter that seems to conflict dramatically with official reports regarding the appearance of nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz, the alleged perpetrator of the crime, during the shooting:  

“I suddenly saw the shooter about twenty feet in front of me standing at the end of the hallway actively shooting down the hallway, just a barrage of bullets, and I’m staring at him thinking why are the police here.  This is strange because he’s in full metal garb, helmet, face mask, bulletproof armor, shooting this rifle I've never seen before" [emphasis added--RG].

Click HERE to see the interview with Lippel. 

After watching the Lippel interview, move on to boston.com and watch this CNN Jake Tapper interview with Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel as the sheriff attempts to explain why "multiple armed officers hung back during the school shooting."  

The real question to ask Sheriff Israel is:  "Who ordered these deputies to stand down, and why?"

Click HERE to see the CNN interview with Sheriff Israel.

Is Bigfoot Real?

From Gabby Ferreira's 2-14-18 San Luis Obispo Tribune article entitled "Is Bigfoot Real?  This Woman Is Suing California to Recognize It as a Species":

"A San Bernardino-area woman is suing California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife and Natural Resources Agency because the state has failed to keep Californians safe from Sasquatch.

"According to the San Bernardino Sun, Claudia Ackley, a 46-year-old Crestline resident and 'Bigfoot enthusiast and researcher,' filed suit in San Bernardino Superior Court on Jan. 18. Ackley told the Sun she has encountered many Sasquatches over the years, most recently in March 2017. On that last encounter, with both of her daughters present, the trio claimed to witness three Bigfoots while hiking a trail in Lake Arrowhead.

"According to the Sun, Ackley is most worried that the government could be putting people in danger by not recognizing Bigfoot as real.

"'People have to be warned about these things. They are big,' Ackley told the Sun. 'We’re totally vulnerable to these things.'"

Click HERE to read Ferreira's entire article.

Freemasons, a Naked Lunatic, and the Laugh Factory

From CWB Chicago comes Matt Lindner's 2-22-18 post "Naked Man 'Jumped Headfirst' Through Laugh Factory, Prosecutors Say":


"A Streeterville man stripped naked and dove headfirst through the door of a Lakeview comedy club last weekend, then battered two cops who tried to help him, prosecutors say.

"Cops said they were flagged down in the 3100 block of North Broadway around 5:15 a.m. on Sunday by witnesses who 'related that a male subject took off all his clothes and jumped headfirst through a glass door into…the Laugh Factory.' Inside the nightclub, cops found 31-year-old Robert Malato on the second floor 'naked and bleeding from cuts on his head, back, glutes, and legs….talking about his Freemason father,' according to court records.

"Police said they tried to walk Malato out, but he allegedly took off his shoes, threw them, raised his fists, and struck two officers in their chests before the cops could gain control of him.

"Malato was treated at Illinois Masonic Medical Center for multiple lacerations. He is charged with two felony counts of aggravated battery to a police officer and misdemeanor criminal damage to property. Judge David Navarro ordered him held on a $10,000 deposit bond, meaning that Malato will be released if he posts $1,000."

 

Paul Hellyer on The Illuminati

From Jon Austin's 2-13-18 Express article entitled "The 'Illuminati' Is Real and Secretly Running Our World Claims Former Defence Minister":

"Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian Minister of Defence, is believed to be the highest-ranking former politician to come out as a believer of the popular conspiracy theory.

"As one of the world's biggest conspiracy theories, the Illuminati is said to be a secretive global elite which runs governments from behind the scenes and is planning to introduce a New World Order (NWO).

"Its key members are said to be drawn from Hollywood and world political and business leaders, with some even accusing its true leaders of being reptilian lizards from space.

"Accusations vary in extremities from the simple implementation of the NWO as a goal at the least, to the Illuminati being a highly Satanic cult seeking to return the devil to earth.

"Other than repeated claims by conspiracy theorists, which have ballooned in number since the growth of the internet, there is no actual proof the Illuminati exists at all.

"However, in a podcast, Mr Hellyer, who was in post in the 1960s, said the Illuminati, at least at its most basic concept, was real and all powerful."

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Parkland Shooting

When juxtaposing the following two articles, one can only come to a rather disturbing conclusion regarding the selective investigative methods of the FBI....

From Michelle Mark's 2-16-18 Business Insider article "The FBI Failed to Act on a Tip It Got About the Florida High-school Shooter":

"The FBI said on Friday that it had failed to follow protocols in handling a tip on the suspected Florida shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who authorities said killed 17 people on Wednesday.

"A person close to Cruz had phoned the FBI's tip line in January to report details about his 'gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,' the bureau said in a statement.

"'Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life,' the statement went on. 'The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken' [...].

"More details have emerged in recent days from Cruz's former classmates, teachers, and neighbors about the pattern of disturbing behavior he had displayed in recent years.

"Cruz reportedly flaunted photos of his guns, introduced himself to people as a 'school shooter,' and had frequent run-ins with law enforcement.

"The FBI also received a tip from a YouTube vlogger about a comment from a user who called himself 'nikolas cruz.' The comment said he wanted to be a 'professional school shooter,' but the FBI said it couldn't confirm the identity of the user."

Compare the above with Greg Farrell and Anders Melin's 2-16-18 Bloomberg article "This Short Seller Pressed 'Tweet.'  Then the FBI Showed Up":

"Short-sellers aren’t known for restraint and decorum, and that goes double on Twitter, where Marc Cohodes vowed to take down a CEO he accuses of fraud. 'I will bury the little fella in a shoe box,' Cohodes tweeted in October.

"Weeks later, a black Ford Expedition pulled up to the short-seller’s Sonoma County ranch. Two FBI agents emerged. They showed Cohodes a printout of his tweet and a second one that mentioned loaded guns. 'Stop sending threatening tweets' about the CEO, one of the agents warned, or else.

"The feds’ Dec. 1 visit, which wasn’t previously reported, is documented in a sheriff’s report and described in a letter of complaint Cohodes’s lawyer sent to the U.S. Department of Justice.

"It was a novel turn in what, until then, seemed like a familiar struggle between a public company, MiMedx Group, and investors betting on its fall. That kind of drama has typically played out online, in the media or in court. But it hasn’t, by the recollection of several lawyers, previously drawn this sort of intervention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The agents’ appearance at Cohodes’s house has touched off a dispute over whether the tweets merited intervention or whether the FBI overstepped — and how the messages came to the FBI’s attention."

As a colleague of mine wrote, "Looks like you need to be a CEO of a B.S. company to be taken seriously." 

What follow are two more recommended analyses regarding the Parkland Shooting....

1)  Loren Coleman's 2-16-18 Twilight Language post entitled "Parkland Syncs," and

2)  a 2-15-18 Secret Sun post entitled "Everyone Predicted It."

THE TRUTH UNDERGROUND REDUX

Last night I returned to Jim Rivas' THE TRUTH UNDERGROUND radio show (broadcast out of New Orleans on WGSO 990 AM) for a two-hour long interview, during which I answer the eternal question:

WHO ARE "THEY"?

Also discussed is the Parkland Shooting, the absurd world of FOIA requests, the mysterious suicide of an FBI agent investigating the Democratic National Committee, the perils of moviegoing in America, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the nightmare of Common Core, thought control in American education, government-sponsored gun drops in South Central Los Angeles, Project CHAMELEO, and my latest book UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES.  You can listen to the entire broadcast by clicking HERE (I enter the show around 32:00).

Meanwhile, in Fort Meade, Maryland...

On St. Valentine's Day a tragic school shooting occurred in Parkland, Florida, resulting in the deaths of seventeen people.  To read Loren Coleman's preliminary analysis of this attack (entitled "Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting:  Updated"), visit Coleman's Twilight Language blog HERE.

On the same day as the mass shooting in Florida, a seemingly unrelated shooting occurred in Fort Meade, Maryland outside the headquarters of the National Security Agency.  At least one person was injured during the incident.  According to Brian Witte's 2-15-18 U.S. News & World Report article entitled "2 Freed After Shots Fired at SUV in NSA Campus Confrontation":

"Two of the three people who were in a sport utility vehicle that was stopped and fired upon when it tried to enter the National Security Agency campus without authorization have been released, an FBI spokesman said Thursday.

"NSA police turned over the other person to the Howard County Sheriff's Office, because he was wanted on allegations of being behind on child support payments, said Dave Fitz, the spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore field office.

"The man, Javonte Alhajie Brown, 24, was expected to be released sometime Thursday, said Deputy Christopher Adams, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.

"Fritz said that the FBI investigation is ongoing to determine why the black SUV carrying the three people tried to enter a top-secret intelligence site at Fort Meade [...].

"An NSA police officer and a civilian onlooker also were injured in the incident Wednesday. Both required hospital treatment, but their injuries were not life-threatening, [Gordon] Johnson [special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore field office] said. Authorities did not say how they were injured.

"Wednesday's incident began about 6:55 a.m. when the SUV tried to enter the spy agency's campus.

"While Johnson declined to give details about who opened fire, he said preliminarily indications are that all gunfire was directed toward the vehicle.

"The vehicle had a New York license plate, and Johnson said it was believed to be a rental car, but he said it was unknown exactly where the vehicle came from.

"'We are working through that,' Johnson said. 'We believe that it was a rental car, but we're still working that as part of the ongoing investigation.'"

Click HERE, HERE, and HERE for further information about the 2-14-18 NSA shooting.

A PREVIEW OF UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES

What follows is an extra-special Valentine's Day Gift from ME to YOU... a preview of my latest novel, UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES....

Chapter 1

The Insect Queen of Venus and Other Strangeness

(September 19, 2014)

            I took to the stage wearing a simple t-shirt and blue jeans.  It was all part of the strategy.  It was best to be as average, as invisible as possible before you opened your mouth and let the jokes fly.  That way the audience wouldn’t build up any preconceived notions about you until you began your patter.  You let your humor speak for you.

            The air was so clear it was obscene.  Years ago a law had been passed banning smoking in clubs, and I still knew comedians who bitched about it—including me.  I can’t explain this.  I don’t smoke.  I hate smoke.  I already obsessed over my health as it was, forever wondering if I was coming down with terminal lung cancer due to the carcinogens in the California air. 

Back in the old days, when I was just a little kid (the youngest smartass to brave open mike night armed with an endless supply of fart jokes), I was always trying to convince Lenny, the owner of the club, to put up fans near the bottom of the stage, to at least blow the smoke in the opposite direction, but I was new at the time and he never listened to my suggestions.  I suppose I could’ve just quit, but Lenny was one of the few club owners who’d actually pay for my act.  So I just had to grin and bear it (literally).

Ah, the irony of it all:  As I was spitting out jokes I was sucking in death.  I often thought of that Charlie Chaplin quote:  “The clown is so close to death that only a knife-edge separates him from it, and sometimes he goes over the border, but always he returns again.”  Or as Heather likes to say, “You’re never bored when you’re a masochist.”  Perhaps that’s why I missed the smoke.

It was a typical Friday night at the tail end of summer.  The place was packed.  Most of the audience was drunk, which only worked to my advantage.  Even though I’d been doing this for many years I still had to deal with the butterflies in my stomach.  Some nights I actually thought I was going to throw up… until I started talking, that is, and then my brain switched to auto-pilot and nothing existed except the laughter.  I’ve talked to the guys who have been doing this half their lives, and according to them it never changes.  Everyone goes through the nervousness, no matter how experienced or established they are.  It never gets any easier.  I guess I could’ve figured that out on my own, but when you watch those guys on TV you never think about how much turmoil is brewing right underneath the surface.  Comedians are very angry people; most of the time they don’t even know what they’re angry at, and yet none of that subliminal rage leaks through your TV screen, no matter how large or sophisticated the entertainment system.

I began my act like I usually did:  with silence.  Not a lot, just enough to keep the audience off-balance.  I’d been heavily influenced by Andy Kaufman’s stage performances.  I liked to make the audience just a bit uncomfortable.  At the beginning of my act my nervousness was actually an advantage; I didn’t try to hide it.  In fact, I tried to accentuate it:  stuttering a bit, dropping in a few “ers” and “uhs” here and there, maintaining an open-eyed stare like a little kid caught in the head lights.  For some reason this seemed to help.  The audience didn’t like false arrogance and bravado.  They were more sympathetic to someone who seemed just a bit nervous, as nervous as they themselves would be in the same situation.  The truth is I don’t really know if this is why the act worked.  It just did.  In the end who can explain such things?

“Uh, hello,” I said, waving slightly as I pondered my next move.  Reading the crowd is an essential skill for any comedian.  In my experience there’s an inverse ratio between the size of the crowd and their tolerance for my usual free-form, experimental humor.  The larger the crowd the more conservative my jokes become.  It happens almost naturally.  On a hot night like this drunks are in no mood for biting, incisive political satire.  They want dumb impressions and one-liners and racist jokes and they damn well better get it.  I don’t care what anybody says:  standup comedy is the most dangerous avocation on Earth, more so than mountain climbing or defusing Cambodian landmines.  One wrong slip of the tongue and you might find yourself hanging from the rafters of the club by a piece of hemp rope.

I waited a beat, then launched into my opening tirade:  “Y’know what’s been pissing me off lately?  These activist types who stand outside Trader Joe’s or the Post Office with those little petitions in their hands and toss insane questions in your face like, ‘Do you have time for the environment?’  Or:  ‘Do you have time to save the whales?’  Could you be more fucking annoying?  It’s impossible to answer that question without looking like a total dick.  It’s like ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’  The question’s purposely designed to guilt trip you.  So one day—I swear to God, this really happened—one day I’m leavin’ Trader Joe’s and this acne-ridden teenage boy is standing there with a clipboard in his hand, and he looks at me with a total straight face and says, ‘Do you have time for teen rape?’  Well, without even thinking about it I said… “Are gonna hold her down or am I?’”  The audience gasped, not sure whether they should be offended or not; they burst into laughter only a second later.  “So I said, ‘Have a nice day!’ and walked away.  The kid seemed a tad stunned.  Well… that’s what the asshole gets for asking a leading question.  Don’t try to manipulate me, you prissy son of a bitch.”   

Then I talked about my family, what it was like growing up with an Irish father and a Chinese mother.  (“Every time my mother breastfed me I was hungry again an hour later.”)  My father was the perfect subject for humor.  He was a complete paradox.  Though he was a card-carrying racist, he married a Chinese woman.  (“He ordered her through an ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine.  They had a special deal that day.  Buy a chink and get a life-long subscription.”)  Growing up with my father wasn’t easy.  He was disappointed that his only son seemed genetically incapable of hitting homeruns and holding forth on the grand significance of football.  He figured I must’ve been, in his words, “some kinda pillow-biter.”  (“Did you hear what Pat Robertson said the other day?  He said God caused the hurricanes in Florida to punish Disney World for sponsoring a Gay Pride Day.  Imagine that—homosexuals attract hurricanes!  I think I’ve figured out how to end the drought in Ethiopia.  Just ship all the gays over there!  Fuck, when the military figures out they can use gays to control the weather they’ll roll out a fuckin’ red carpet for ‘em.”)  Despite our many differences, however, I haven’t been able to escape his influence.  I admit that I’ve inherited a tinge of my father’s racism.  (“But I’m trying to make up for it.  I’m writing a screenplay about the Ku Klux Klan.  It’s called Boyz in the Hood.  You think that title’s been taken?”)

As the laughter grew I stared out into the audience.  The room was so dark and hazy it was difficult to see anyone.  You couldn’t really know what they were thinking until you heard the laughter—or didn’t.  This has happened too, of course, but I don’t like to talk about it.  None of us do.  When you hear silence, the trick is to simply keep going….

“Hey, I just heard on the news that a guy got caught performing necrophilia in a funeral home here in California.  It turns out they can’t charge this guy with anything because necrophilia isn’t illegal in California.  Now, wait a minute, hold on here.  You’re telling me that if you smoke a friggin’ doobie you can get thrown into the slammer for up to ten years but if you stick your dick in a dead guy you get to walk scott free?  Of course, if you get caught smokin’ a joint while having sex with a corpse, then they can charge you with something.  Huh?  Is something slightly off-kilter here or what?”

I then launched into a routine I had developed while forced to hear a slew of amateur L.A. poets yammering their pretentious stuff and nonsense over the course of a thousand and one open mike nights at clubs and coffee shops all around Southern California.  I called the routine “My Girlfriend’s a Coke Whore.”  As with most of my material, it was mostly autobiographical.  (Thank Yahweh/Ba’al/Osiris/etc., I was no longer with the delightful female who had inspired the bit.)  The routine consisted of me reciting a “poem” with a straight face while my fellow comedian, Danny Oswald, sat at a piano behind me belting out responses to my existential agony in the form of song.  Despite being the whitest white guy in this dimension or any other, Danny could do a pretty damn good Louis Armstrong impersonation, which is why I asked him to help me out in the first place.  Here’s how the routine went:

            Me (my hands shaking slightly as I read from a crumpled piece of paper, my golden and immortal poem):  “My girlfriend is a coke whore.  The other day I found a condom in her cunt.  It was not mine.”

            Danny (while singing in his throaty, bluesy voice and allowing his nimble fingers to dance gracefully across the ivories):  “You gotta give everybody a chance.”

            Me:  “I don’t love coke… but I love her.  I hate loving her because when I see her blowing another man, it breaks my heart.”

            Danny:  “You can do anything if only you believe.”

            Me:  “When I see her the next day I ask, ‘How could you do this to me?’  She looks at me and then gets on her knees and I remember what a beautiful person she is.”

            Danny:  “The love between a man and woman is so pure.”

            Me:  “But she only does this so I let her into my apartment, and then she steals from me.  She stole my cell phone, she stole my toaster.”

            Danny:  “White toast golden brown on both sides, not anymore.”

            Me:  “And later I asked why she did that, and she kissed me, and I was weak, and I made love to her.  The moment I came she said, ‘You fuckin’ faggot!’ and I put my pants on, and I left her apartment.”

            Danny:  “The fire in a woman can make a man go crazy.”

            Me:  “But the very next day, the very next day, I catch her getting fucked from behind while she’s sucking some other guy’s balls.  And when she saw me she spit the balls out of her mouth and said, ‘You fuckin’ faggot!’”

            Danny:  “Oh shit, I can’t help you with that.”

            Me:  “For weeks after that I could not talk to her and could not maintain an erection.  I bought pills off television and through mail order from Mexico, but those balls in her mouth, those balls in her mouth.”

            Danny:  “Life has its sweetness but its bitterness too.”

            Me:  A couple of days later she showed up at my apartment with her new boyfriend.  She asked to borrow money, then said, ‘Sorry about that faggot thing.’  ‘Which one?’ I said.  ‘All three of them,’ she said.  I gave her a fifty dollar bill, and she spit her gum out in it, and put it in her bra.

            Danny:  “What the fuck… what the fuck… you got me there…I’m stumped….”

            Me:  “A few weeks later she called and wanted me to bail her out of jail.  I told her I would as long as she agreed to get treatment.  On the way back home in the car she asked me for gum.”

            Danny:  “Ugh… god damn it… not the gum thing again… what’s with that gum thing….”

            Me:  “She started treatment, and the effects were immediately apparent.  During my visits to her I noticed shaking, chills, and irritability.  I told her she looked beautiful, and she asked me to stay with her forever.”

            Danny:  “Forever’s a long time… talk to your lawyer….”

            Me:  “But when she was giving me a blowjob I could barely keep my erection because her technique had deteriorated.  And I just couldn’t be… with someone… who didn’t understand me.”

            Danny:  “Blue...blue… blue… balls….”

            Me:  “I realized that cocaine opened up a part of her psyche that made her a mouth-fuck genius, so I went out and scored her sixty dollars’ worth.”

            Danny:  “On the corner of 8^th and Junipero talk to a guy named Ronnie…he’s black….”

            Me:  “But instead of sucking my cock she escaped the treatment center and ended up blowing a bum for what turned out to be a bag of baking soda.”

            Danny:  “Baking soda’s fantastic ‘cause it keeps everything fresh….”

            Me:  “That’s when I realized that I just can’t be with her anymore.  No matter how much I love her, it can never work out between us.  Nor can I ever be rid of the pain of my love.”

            Danny:  “Can you please now explain that gum thing to me….”

The laughter swelled.  We did a solid ten-minute set, leaving the audience primed for Karen Griffin, an angry black lesbian who told a lot of jokes about… well, angry black lesbians.  What else?  I prayed Karen came back in one piece.  Danny and I strolled back to the bar where one of the comedians who’d gone on before us, Heather Wheeler, was drinking a beer.  Danny and Heather Wheeler were, like me, disgusted with the current state of standup comedy.  Most of the time we’d end up right here at the bar, eating peanuts, getting drunk, and grumbling about how flaccid and vacuous most comedians were—the successful ones, at any rate.  Many nights we fantasized about ramming a stake through Dane Cook’s thieving heart and planting his head on a barber pole.  I’d even worked out a five-minute routine around exactly that premise.

Of course, all the mainstream comedians claimed we were just bitter, and maybe that was true.  I’d been in and out of standup for years.  If a major network had offered me a part in a lame sitcom at that time would I have had the balls to turn it down?  I don’t know, I’d like to think so.  When you haven’t eaten anything but Saltine crackers and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup for a month you’re less inclined to be self-righteous.  On the other hand I knew a lot of friends of mine—talented young comedians—who had been plucked out of obscurity from the alternative night clubs, plopped down in the middle of a major network who immediately cast them in another mindless sitcom that tanked in two weeks and ruined their reputations, leaving them floating in some mist-filled limbo where they were no longer “alternative” or “mainstream.”  They’d sold their souls for a pile of fairy gold that turned to dust within seconds of grasping hold of it.  I didn’t want to end up that way.

Which is why I mainly stuck to the alternative L.A. clubs like Largo, the Cyclops, and Prospero’s.  I couldn’t stand the mainstream nightspots like the Improv or The Comedy Store, where all the comedians were either cute Jewish guys or beach-blond jocks who apparently found great philosophical relevance in the poor quality of airplane food or the unreliability of parking meters, nothing even in the general vicinity of obscene or cutting edge or controversial.  Hell, I don’t really blame them.  Life’s much simpler in the mainstream.  I mean, hey, don’t get me started on that time the black Muslim began heckling me from the front row.  I took off my glasses and told him to come up on stage and tell me what he thought about me to my face.  Ninety-nine percent of the time hecklers are just cowards who will slump down in their seats when challenged.  On this particular occasion, however, I just happened to tap into that rare one percent of the population.  Danny tells me my jokes were even funnier with a broken nose and lips the size of Encino.  If so I’ll do without the extra laughs, thank you.

Danny’s a weird guy, a real shut-in.  The only time he ever leaves his room is to go to the clubs.  He lives in a small apartment with his dad, who’s a retired mechanic.  I don’t know how he got the brain he did, but of all the comedians I know he’s the one most deserving of success.  He’s kind of like a cross between Jackie Mason and Andy Kaufman, both wise and insane at the same time.  He’s the gentlest soul you’ll ever meet, though it’s difficult to talk to him because he’s constantly in character.  He has a hard time relating to people off-stage.  That’s a common occupational hazard, I think.

            He got goofed on a lot as kid.  Hell, which one of us didn’t?  Danny claimed it was because of his last name.  As a result he became obsessed with the JFK assassination.  He’s fashioned a lot of jokes around it, more than you can possibly imagine.  The one I remember the most is a little two-liner that goes:  “Did you know that Oliver Stone is making a sequel to JFK?  It’s called KFC, about the assassination of Col. Sanders.”  He says it with such a straight face you almost believe it might be true.

            “You killed again,” Heather said as we slid into the seats on either side of her.

            I shrugged.  I rapped my knuckles on the bar to get the bartender’s attention, then held up one finger.  I don’t know why, but a beer tasted best right after a performance.  “I think I sucked.  I always think that.”

            “Cut the bullshit,” Heather said.  “You know you were good.  You think they were laughing out of politeness?”

            “I could’ve been better.”

            “You could always be better,” Heather said, tossing a peanut in the air and catching it on the tip of her tongue.  She had a talented tongue.  It was her best feature, in fact.  “You could always be worse too,” she added.  “You could be dead.”  Heather was thirty-two, three years older than me.  She wasn’t an attractive woman, she was just kind of average.  She had mousy brown hair, hardly wore make-up and had a scrawny, underfed body.  Nevertheless she had a way of shaping the space around her as if it belonged only to her, a way of moving across the room that announced to everybody in no uncertain terms:  “I know exactly who I am, I don’t care what you think about me, and get the hell out of my way.”  She had Attitude, with a capital A, and that more than made up for her plainness.  Her looks grew on you after awhile.  She had a beautiful smile, wide and bright and enticing.  I think she’d had sex with about twelve different comedians on the L.A. nightclub circuit (none of them Danny or me) and in every case the relationship ended with her dumping him, not the other way around.  I often wondered what it would be like to be her boyfriend, but I was also afraid of being eaten alive.  One night when I’d had one too many drinks I made an awkward, fumbling pass at her that ended with Heather physically removing my hand from her left breast while suggesting various alternative placements for it like the garbage disposal or the inside of the microwave oven.  It was kind of embarrassing.  The night ended with me slinking out of her apartment while she visited the toilet.  The next morning I called to apologize, but she quickly changed the subject.  Neither of us had mentioned the incident since then. 

            “What if I am dead?” I said.  “What if we’re all dead and this is Heaven?”

            “Gee, wouldn’t that be Hell?” Heather said.  She tossed another peanut into the air.  This time it bounced off the side of her mouth and landed somewhere on the floor.  “Shit!” she said and peered angrily at the floor, as if intent on retrieving the peanut and strangling it for its impudence.

            “The Peanut That Got Away,” Danny said into his beer.  “Starring Hardy Kruger and Alec McCowen.  Rank Pictures, Great Britain, 1957.”

            Another obscure reference.  Sometimes I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

            I spun around on my stool and watched Karen Griffin performing for a few moments.  She was telling a joke about political correctness:  “You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that us queers should just get back in the fuckin’ closet.  The world seemed less weird that way, don’t you agree?”  The audience laughed and clapped.  She was really winning them over.  “I mean, have you ever heard of this children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies?  It’s about two lesbians who raise a kid.  I’m totally against that, man.  I mean, shit, dykes can’t raise kids.  After all, it says so in the Old Testament.  Genesis I:I:  ‘Dykes can’t raise kids.’  It’s right there on page one!  Just the other day I saw a sequel called Heather Has TWELVE Mommies.  Now, this is getting way out of hand.  It was a pop-up book!  I opened it up and these turkey basters flew out and almost hit me in the head.  Shit, nearly knocked me out cold, man.”

            She had the audience in stitches.  “She’s getting more laughs than I did,” I said to no one in particular.

            “Of course,” Heather said.  “The audience is afraid she’s going to kill them if they don’t laugh.”

            Griffin did look scary.  She insisted on wearing this skin-tight black body suit on stage, and her kinky hair was spiked out in all possible directions; the top of her head looked like the jumping jacks I used to play with as a kid.  Even more scary were her eyes.  She suffered from some weird condition that enabled her to bulge her eyes out of her head until they appeared to be as big as cue balls; this was both nauseating and funny at the same time.  Her skin was as black as the depths of the Cayman Trench and her body impossibly lithe, as if she spent the majority of her time swimming deep underwater.  She looked like the offspring of a mutant aquatic spider from another planet that had attacked and raped a human being on some lonesome road late one night out in the middle of nowhere.  I would never say this to her face, of course.

            Heather might.  I don’t think they were too fond of each other.  I never knew why.

            “I think it has more to do with the fact that she’s god damn funny,” Danny said, responding to Heather’s snide remark.  He turned around, planted his elbows on the bar behind him, and watched Griffin ripping into some poor heckler in the front row.  “I want to marry her.”

            Both Heather and I stared at him in shock.  Danny very rarely made any reference to women whatsoever, except perhaps in a comedic way.  I wasn’t even certain he’d ever been on a date, though any guy on a stage tends to attract groupies, no matter how unappealing he is.

            “Are you high?” I said.

            “No,” Danny said very seriously, “I think I love her.”  It was hard to tell when he was joking or not.  He brushed his hair back with his hands, then smoothed out his flannel shirt.  “After her set I’ve decided I’m going to ask her out on a date.”

            “She’s a dyke,” Heather said.  She had this bemused look on her face that was rather hilarious.

            “I know,” Danny said.  “That just makes her all the more intriguing.”

            Heather glanced up at the ceiling and rolled her eyes.

            “He’s got to be pulling our legs,” I said to Heather.

            “Don’t you bet on it, kiddo,” she said, tossing yet another peanut into the air.  This one dropped right down her throat.  She almost choked on it.  For a moment I thought I was going to have to perform the Heimlich Maneuver.  I began slapping her on the back as she coughed and sputtered like a backfiring car.  Fortunately, just as Griffin was finishing her set, Heather got her coughing under control.  When I turned to look at Danny he was already walking toward the stage.  Heather and I watched him approach Griffin as she stepped off the side of the stage, while behind her Lenny grabbed the mike and began doing his usual patter in between acts.  We saw Danny lean toward her ear in order to be heard over the noise.  After talking to her for no more than twenty seconds, Griffin flashed a wide ivory-white smile (the first time I’d seen anything even remotely resembling a smile on anything even remotely resembling her face) at which point she extended her elbow (I thought, My God, she’s going to disable his floating rib with a quick jab in the side!) and allowed Danny to slip his arm through hers.  They strolled off toward the backstage area arm in arm, looking like long-separated sweethearts.

            Heather and I remained silent for quite awhile.  I felt like a witness to a rare religious miracle.

            At last I muttered, “That must’ve been staged.”

            “I don’t think so,” Heather said, turning her back on Lenny’s patter and addressing her beer mug once again.

            “Excuse me, what’re you talking about?  You think Danny has the ability to sweet talk the Insect Queen From Venus into a candlelit dinner within twenty fucking seconds?”

            “Yes.”

            I sighed and knocked back a swig of beer.  “God damn it, you’re probably right.  The universe really does work like that, doesn’t it?”

            “It’s an odd-shaped world full of odd-shaped folk.”

            “Why don’t I have that ability?  I mean, I’m a professional comedic linguistic technician.  Words are my stock in trade, fachrissakes!  I should be able to flap my lips and make women roll over and play dead, right?”

            Heather shook her head.  “It’s gotta be in your genes.  You’re good enough to make people laugh, but you’re not persuasive.”  She began waving her finger in the air as if she were about to make a brilliant philosophical point.  “Now Hitler… Hitler, on the other hand, was the exact opposite.”  She took another sip of her beer.  “He was persuasive, but he couldn’t make people laugh.”

            “How do you know?”

            She shrugged.  “I dunno, have you ever seen footage of Hitler crackin’ out witty one-liners, making all those wide-eyed German boys in their sexy S.S. uniforms bust a gut over jokes about sauerkraut or Volkswagens?  No, you just see him waving his fist around, complaining about Jews and taxes and things like that.”

            “Maybe they just never show the footage of him being funny.”

            “So you think they’re hiding it?  The Jewish media is suppressing evidence of Hitler’s scary talents, is that it?”

            “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

            “Are you kidding?”

            “Yes.”

            As Heather finished her beer Danny and Griffin emerged from the back of the club with their jackets on, looking like they were primed for a night on the town.  Griffin was beaming like a little girl in love for the first time, falling all over Danny as if she couldn’t bear not to be in physical contact with him for more than two seconds.

            They strolled right up to us.  Danny said, “Well, we’re heading on over to Ye Rustic Inn for a few drinks.  You want to join us?”

            Ye Rustic Inn was a funky little bar in Los Feliz where some of us hung out after our gigs were finished, swapping jokes and offering constructive (and/or deconstructive) criticism on each other’s performances.  I was about to accept Danny’s offer to join them, just to observe the synergy between an angry black lesbian and a neurotic white shut-in, when Griffin suddenly leaned over Danny’s shoulder and said, “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but why don’t you just keep your ass planted where it is, okay?  I want Danny all to myself.”  She slid her hands down Danny’s chest and ran the tip of her tongue over his ear lobe.

            Somewhat taken aback, I replied, “Well, hell, I didn’t want to go anywhere with you two anyway.”

            “And I have to wash my hair tonight,” Heather said, not even turning around to face them.  She was watching them in the mirror behind the bar.

            Danny said, “Well, uh, I’ll see you guys later then… I guess,” as Griffin dragged him toward the exit.

            When the doors closed behind them I turned to Heather and said, “Well, how do you like that?  Can you believe that?”

            “Yes.”  Heather paid the bartender for her beer.

            “You’re certainly taking this in stride.”

            She shrugged.  “It doesn’t affect me.”

            “Doesn’t affec—?  Are you crazy?  This affects everyone in the world.  The mantle of the Earth is shifting, the galactic center dissolving, the universe retracting at a faster pace than ever before due to the mere possibility that Griffin and Danny might procreate tonight and spawn who knows what kind of evil homunculi.  Can you even begin to comprehend how this might alter the gene pool?”

            “Let’s hope they stick to the shallow end of the gene pool, far enough away from us more highly evolved primates to not derail us from our upward spiralling path.”  She rose from her stool.

            “Hey, where’re you going so early?”

            She sighed.  “Home, I guess, then to bed.”

            “Yeah, it’s been a long night, hasn’t it?  I’m not doing much of anything either.  You know… thought I’d go back to my little rabbit hole, maybe heat up a can of Campbell’s chicken soup, the kind with 33% more chicken in it, sprinkle some Saltine crackers on top… you know, watch the snow on my black and white TV I bought at a yard sale, then retire to my mattress on the floor for a restless, lonely night’s sleep.”

            Heather and I stared at each other for a few seconds, me with an affable smile on my boyish face, she with a totally unreadable, stoic expression.  So forceful was the orgone energy in the room at that moment I could feel the sexual tension exploding out of our bodies like forks of lightning, interlocking, spinning, dancing an electrical dance.  I knew I had her within my grasp.  I just needed to close the deal with a few smooth, well-spoken words.

            Before I could open my mouth, however, Heather said, “Well, hope you have fun, then,” and left the club.

            I watched the doors swinging shut… back and forth, back and forth… then returned my attention to my glass of beer.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the bartender snickering over my rejection, so I glared at him insanely like Mohamed Atta staring at the Twin Towers right before blowing them to smithereens.  He decided to clean the opposite end of the bar, leaving me alone with my pain.  I dropped a peanut into the glass, watched it break the surface tension, studied the resultant ripples that spread out quickly in concentric circles.  I sighed and thought:  Most people call me bi-sexual, because whenever I try to have sex with them they say, “Bye-bye, bye-bye!”  I giggled into the beer and figured I might as well add that to my repertoire.  Yeah, might as well.

            Later that night, as I was sitting at home eating a bowl of Campbell’s chicken soup with Saltine crackers sprinkled on top, I heard a strange news report on the radio (the snow made watching TV impossible).  A major university had just released the results of a five-year-long scientific study; the scientists involved had come to the conclusion that the deterioration of the ozone was due not to the burning of fossil fuels, but to the methane in cow farts.  I glanced at the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day.  Nope, it was the middle of September.  It was a serious report!  Imagine the amount of tax-payer’s dollars that had been used to fund such a thing.  Why didn’t the scientists just break down laughing halfway through the first day?  That would’ve ended the whole charade right there.  More disturbing still was the fact that the newscaster didn’t erupt into wild guffaws while reporting the silly thing.  I often wondered if most of the human race wasn’t suffering from some kind of strange disease, an anti-evolutionary trait that prevented them from detecting the mad humor that surrounded them each and every day.

            Little did I know that this would prove to be more than just idle fancy.

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 THE REVIEWS ARE IN...!

“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

"Until the Last Dog Dies is not only a novel unique to this [political] moment, but one that is to stand-up comedy what Catch-22 was to war.  It's one of the great books of the year."
—Adam-Troy Castro, SCI FI Magazine

“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 

“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

"Now, I like crass humor and potty talk as much as the next person, but there has at least got to be characters that I like or can identify with. This wasn't the case in my reading and in fact, I skipped the middle of the book and went straight to the end--and I still didn't care about anybody."
--Some dip on Goodreads