Christine Morgan Reviews CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES!

Multiple award-winning novelist Christine Morgan has just reviewed my short story collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES. Here's an excerpt:

People often ask “what IS bizarro?” as if there’s a single handy definition, but there isn’t. Indeed, even within the category of bizarro itself, multiple sub-genres thrive, from the sheer comedic wackadoo to the elevated philosophical.

As I write this review, Robert Guffey’s delightfully wackadoo previous work, The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook, recently received the Wonderland Award, yet here I am looking at Cryptopolis, which is well to the other end of the spectrum. Proving, not that proof is necessary, he’s a talented multi-threat who should be watched very closely.

Wait, that sounds like a threat. Oh well; you get the gist. Cryptopolis, a collection of interconnected and cleverly interwoven short stories, is simply beautiful, while at the same time exceedingly surreal.

To read Morgan's entire review, click HERE.

FYI: One of the tales in CRYPTOPOLIS, "Initiation," was recently adapted by StarShipSofa! If you want to hear Doni Nicoll-Duir's evocative reading of "Initiation," click HERE!

And you can hear me talking about the secret origins of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES on several different podcasts and radio shows including Tarek Al-Ubaidi's CROPfm, Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, Solaris Blueraven's HYPERSPACE, Matthew Hopewell's THE AP STRANGE SHOW, and Chris Mathieu's FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE NEWS.

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

 "If you want a walk on the wild side, and I mean WILD, Robert Guffey’s fiction delivers that and more. It’s as if you’re lying in the grass in a park on a calm summer afternoon, you look up, and a creature you can’t even describe is looking at you. He starts talking in an even voice. But his words are chopping reality to pieces, and when he puts the pieces back together again, and you see the new picture, you feel a need to call the police. But then you realize you’re in a new place where the last people you want to talk to are the cops. What do you do now? You’re on your own. You better have strong resources. Very strong." 

 --Jon Rappoport, author of The Secret Behind Secret Societies

"The Black Ambulance" on THE NOSLEEP PODCAST!

On January 1st of this year, DIRTY MAGICK MAGAZINE published my new novelette, "The Black Ambulance." Despite the fact that only a month or so has passed since the story's debut, it has already leaped from one medium to another, having been adapted into an effectively eerie and immersive audio drama by the award-winning team at THE NOSLEEP PODCAST. You can hear the story on the Premium bonus episode made specifically for Valentine's Day. If you want to listen to "The Black Ambulance," click HERE to subscribe!

Happy Valentine's Day!

My daughter, Olivia, recently took this photo of Melissa and me on the beach in Carpinteria. Happy Valentine's Day!

Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller on Valentine's Day

Exactly four years ago today, Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller (author of GNOSTICISM: NEW LIGHT ON THE ANCIENT TRADITION OF INNER KNOWING and many other esoteric books) delivered the following lecture at the Ecclesia Gnostica in Los Angeles...

Day of the Holy Valentinus, February 13th 2022:

"Why is creation so weird? Why do all living beings fight each other and eat each other? Why is the great mantra of the universe 'Munch Munch Munch'? These are serious questions. They occurred to me when I was a child already, and my parents said, 'Oh, well, you shouldn't worry about that now... maybe later. Maybe later in life.'"

--Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, 2-13-22 

Robert W. Sullivan on FRIDAY THE 13th

Since today is Friday the 13th, this would be an appropriate time to listen to Robert W. Sullivan's analysis of the FRIDAY THE 13th films on the 10-23-23 episode of Steven Snider's THE FARM podcast. To paraphrase Snider's description of the show, topics in this episode include: The Knights Templar, the origins of Friday the 13th being perceived as an unlucky day, Jason and the Argonauts, Sirius, the Tarot, the Freudian aspects of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, witchcraft in the HALLOWEEN franchise, the Threefold Goddess, 9/11, Gnosticism, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THEY LIVE, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, quantum physics, tachyons, and other High Weirdness! To listen to the entire episode, click HERE.

Matthew LaCroix on the "Mysterious Symbols" of a "Lost Civilization"

From Stacy Liberatore's 2-5-26 DAILY MAIL article entitled "Mysterious Symbols Spanning the Globe Hint at a Lost Civilization 38,000 Years Ago":

For centuries, mainstream archaeologists have dismissed the idea that an advanced civilization existed long before modern times.

Now, an independent researcher claims he has uncovered 'paradigm-shifting evidence of a lost civilization' that hid a sophisticated code through geometry, symbolism, and monument design across the globe to preserve its knowledge ahead of catastrophic events.

Matthew LaCroix told Daily Mail the discovery, sparked by a recent find in Egypt, links symbols across continents and dates back 38,000 to 40,000 years.

According to LaCroix, this civilization tracked cosmic cycles, anticipated global disasters, and embedded teachings about human origins, the structure of the universe, and divine existence into monuments and sacred sites.

His investigation began after identifying recurring giant T-shapes, three-level indents, and step pyramids carved into ancient stones worldwide.

'These specific symbols that are built in different size proportions, and the symbols are found in ancient stones around the world, are not supposed to exist; no cultures are supposed to have any cross-platform,' LaCroix explained.

The symbols appear in locations ranging from Turkey's Van region to South America and Cambodia.

According to LaCroix, the origin of this global system lies in eastern Turkey's Lake Van region at a site known as Ionis.

He described it as the earliest source of the civilization's symbols, architecture, and teachings, dating it to around 40,000 years old. He argues it preserves the original blueprint later carried to places such as Giza and Tiwanaku.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

"A New Constellation of Orbital Data Centers"

From Alan Boyle's 2-2-26 COSMIC LOG article entitled "Elon Musk Lays Out a New Vision as SpaceX Acquires xAI":

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he’s making space-based artificial intelligence the “immediate focus” of a newly expanded company that not only builds rockets and satellites, but also controls xAI’s generative-AI software and the X social-media platform.

That’s the upshot of today’s announcement that SpaceX has acquired xAI. The Information quoted unnamed sources as saying that xAI was valued at $250 billion, while SpaceX’s value was set at a trillion dollars. That would make SpaceX the most valuable private company in the world — but because Musk held a controlling interest in both companies, those valuations may be somewhat subjective.

Ross Gerber, an investment adviser who tracks Musk’s business dealings, quipped on X that the world’s richest person decided to go ahead with the acquisition after “a short negotiation with himself.”

Musk said the combination of SpaceX and xAI would facilitate the creation of a new constellation of orbital data centers. SpaceX is already seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission to put up to a million satellites in low Earth orbit for such a constellation.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

The Links Between Jeffrey Epstein & 4chan Founder Christopher Poole

From Clara Molot's 2-5-26 VANITY FAIR article entitled "The New Epstein Files Are Reopening the Pizzagate Box":

Christopher Poole—better known by the handle “moot”—founded 4chan in 2003, creating what would become one of the internet’s most influential and socially corrosive forums. Its current events board, /new/, eventually emerged as a breeding ground for far-right conspiracies, meme warfare, and radicalization. The board became so volatile that Poole ultimately took it down in January of 2011.

According to the newly released documents, Epstein met with Poole in late October of 2011.

“There is a cool guy (KID) that you should meet,” Boris Nikolic—a doctor, biotech investor, and former adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—writes in an email to Epstein on October 20. In other messages, Nikolic describes Poole as “one of the greatest hackers” but also “very sensitive.”

“I liked mmot [sic] alot,” Epstein writes to Nikolic on October 24 after his and Poole’s introduction. “I drove him home, he is very bright.”

October 2011 is also when the /new/ replacement board, /pol/, was launched.

The timing may well be a coincidence. There is no evidence that Epstein influenced /pol/’s birth or 4chan’s moderation decisions, or that Poole, who stepped down as the administrator of 4chan at the beginning of 2015, had any direct involvement with Pizzagate the following year. One email does show that Poole hoped to meet Epstein again in 2012, but beyond that, the trail goes cold...

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

“Epstein Investigation Summary & Timeline”

From Victoria Bekiempis' 1-31-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "Epstein Lawyers Discussed Possibility of Cooperation with Prosecutors Days Before His Death, Files Reveal":

Less than two weeks before Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail, his lawyers and Manhattan federal prosecutors met and discussed his potential cooperation, several documents within a cache of newly released investigative files state.

“On July 29, 2019, FBI and [prosecutors] met with Epstein’s attorneys, who, in very general terms, discussed the possibility of a resolution of the case, and the possibility of the defendant’s cooperation,” an FBI document titled “Epstein Investigation Summary & Timeline” stated.

Another document titled “Jeffrey Epstein Significant Case Notification”, which was not attributed to a specific agency, closely resembled this FBI memo, and provided several more details.

“Defense Counsel did not make a specific proposal, and they did not indicate what the nature of Epstein’s cooperation might be, if any,” this document stated. “It was suggested that Defense Counsel contact SDNY if Epstein was prepared to accept responsibility for his conduct and/or they had a specific proposal for a resolution of this case.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Frequent Newsmax Commentator, Bill Stevenson, Charged With Murdering His Wife

1) From Wilko Martinez-Cachero's 2-6-26 DAILY MAIL article entitled "Daughter of Woman Allegedly Murdered by Jill Biden's Ex-husband Issues Chilling Statement as She Vows 'Justice Will Be Served'":

The daughter of the woman allegedly murdered by Jill Biden's ex-husband spoke out following the accused killer's arrest earlier this week.

Linda Stevenson, 64, was declared dead inside her Wilmington, Delaware, home on December 28.

Her husband, Bill Stevenson, 77, was taken into custody Monday and charged with first-degree murder of his wife. 'He's going to need all the prayers he can get from prison,' Christina Vettori, 45, said on Facebook, per New York Post.

Bill failed to meet the $500,000 cash bail after his arrest and was committed to the Howard Young Correctional Institution.

He was previously married to former first lady Jill Biden from 1970 to 1975.

Linda's cause of death has not yet been released, as New Castle County Police detectives continue probing her death.

While her obituary noted that she died unexpectedly, it did not mention her husband.

To read Martinez-Cachero's entire article, click HERE.

2) From David Edwards' 2-3-26 RAW STORY article entitled "'Do Not Believe It': Newsmax Host Shares Theory as Jill Biden's Ex Charged with Murder​":

Newsmax host Greg Kelly spoke out in defense of former First Lady Jill Biden's ex-husband, Bill Stevenson, after he was charged with the murder of his wife [...]. In a Tuesday post on X, Kelly insisted that Stevenson could not have murdered his wife.

"JILL BIDEN's Ex Husband BILL STEVENSON (a good friend of mine) is charged with Murdering his wife Linda?" Kelly wrote. "I do NOT believe it. I Know them and it's NOT POSSIBLE he harmed her. BILL was Falsely Prosecuted before because JOE BIDEN Hates him. NOT Buying it."

In a previous interview on Kelly's Newsmax program, Stevenson slammed his ex-wife for criticizing President Donald Trump.

To read Edwards' entire article, click HERE. For further information about Greg Kelly and Newsmax, here's an excerpt from my 12-17-23 EVERGREEN REVIEW article entitled "The Silent Civil War: The Radicalization of the Evangelical Right":

Many mainstream political pundits seem to think that QAnon is dead and buried, but the ideologies that spawned QAnon are (sadly) alive and kicking. Witness, for example, the January 2023 attempt to prevent Kevin McCarthy from being elected Speaker of the House by a faction of Trump-supporting Republicans who believe that McCarthy is a “puppet” secretly working for the Democrats. In light of the blatant QAnon connections to David DePape’s October 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi in San Francisco, and the immediate move on the part of MAGA Republicans to flip the narrative and blame the attempted murder on leftists, it’s clear that QAnon’s brand of rabble-rousing is just as incendiary as it was during Trump’s reign. On January 6, 2021, we all saw Q’s followers building gallows and tying nooses for the express purpose of lynching former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, so why is it surprising that a member of Q’s zombie hordes would continue these assassination attempts in 2022? Given the fact that the much-touted midterm “red wave” turned out to be underwhelming, these frustrated Trumpists and QAnon acolytes will no doubt grow even more desperate as reality veers further and further away from the fantasy world they’ve built up inside their heads.

Meanwhile, QAnon ideologies have wormed their way into conservative cable “news” networks like Newsmax, which was founded by Christopher Ruddy, author of The Strange Death of Vincent Foster, a book that accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of murdering Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster like a latter-day pair of bloodthirsty Macbeths. Newsmax shows like Greg Kelly Reports are little more than thinly disguised QAnon-adjacent infotainment programs for MAGA-besotted deplorables who suffer from the delusion that Fox News is a false front for Antifa and Black Lives Matter. In case you don’t know, here’s the lowdown on Greg Kelly: A “news” anchor manqué, he’s an ex-Marine who was the subject of a Manhattan District Attorney’s office investigation upon being accused of raping and impregnating a young paralegal in 2012. Based on his nightly song and dance routines on Newsmax, the more astute viewers might conclude that Kelly sustained serious brain damage when a mortar round reportedly exploded near his face while the stalwart weekend warrior pretended to cover the 2003 US invasion of Iraq with anything even remotely resembling journalistic objectivity. This plucky “news” reporter walks a delicate tightrope act every weeknight, trying to project the image of a common sense conservative while spewing berserk opinions worthy of an unemployed InfoWars correspondent as he delivers the latest QAnon interpretations of the news with a wink and a nod directed at his fellow Trumpers in the audience. Kelly never mentions Q by name, but he invokes special Q/MAGA code phrases like “draining the swamp” and “fake news” and “the Deep State” while questioning the results of the 2020 elections on a near-nightly basis.

(By the way, according to Kelly and his ilk, Trump won the 2020 election hands down, right? Some of these Q-heads even go so far as to claim that Trump’s still riding around on Air Force One. If that’s the case, how could Trump run for a third term in 2024? Why would these patriots, these ostensible lovers of law and order, encourage their Inciter-in-Chief to violate the Constitution by engaging in an illegal presidential campaign forbidden by that very same document? I guess the Constitution and all the wholesome Amurrican values it represents gets kicked to the wayside pretty quickly when it comes to pushing the Divine Savior back into the Oval Office for an extra term to which he could not possibly be entitled per the logic of their own argument.)

When reporting on the Paul Pelosi attack in San Francisco, Kelly almost always alludes to the QAnon theory that Pelosi’s attacker was a male prostitute hired by Mr. Pelosi himself. He never brings up the theory directly, mind you, but he knows what to say to signal to his viewers that he’s in on the Q game.

When commenting on the January 6th insurrection, he accuses Democrats and the FBI of being the ones who are actually responsible for the riot. On December 20, 2022, while bloviating over the “fake” findings of the January 6 Committee, Kelly questioned the sincerity of a Capitol police officer named Harry Dunn who testified that members of the MAGA insurrectionists were hurling racial epithets at him that day. While pounding on his desk, Kelly asserted, “That never happened!” Why say this? After catching even a cursory look at that ragtag lynch mob, is it so inconceivable to imagine these noose-bearing hordes verbally assaulting a Black law enforcement officer? Here’s some delicious irony for you: Kelly just published a new book entitled Justice For All, which he claims is “a stirring defense of American law enforcement.” When the law enforcement officers in question are Black or trying their best to protect the Capitol from raging Trump supporters, I guess that defense becomes somewhat less “stirring.”

Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. In June of 2021, Kelly tweeted, “Military life had its Perks, but it was also a major pain. I will tell you what took ‘the sting out of it’—that when I was flying around the Pacific Ocean off of ships, I knew there was a Secretary of Defense who was white, just like me! Made a big difference with ‘morale.’” In a separate tweet, he insisted that serving “a Caucasian male” like President Clinton made his military service “all worthwhile.” Not surprisingly, Kelly soon deleted both tweets. By this, one can only conclude that New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Walter Kelly raised a child incapable of standing by his word.

If you want to read the entirety of "The Silent Civil War," then click HERE. 

 

"A Secular Religion"

Courtesy of the SAUCERS, SPOOKS & KOOKS YouTube channel...

Q - A Secular Religion:

 

THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK: THE COMMERCIAL!!!

Last spring, to coincide with Mother's Day, I wrote the script for a radio commercial hawking my Wonderland Award-winning collection, THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK. This commercial aired almost every night for several months on Gary Andersen's NIGHT DREAMS TALK RADIO. To experience the full effect of this audio assault on the senses, simply click on the link at the bottom of this post...

And as an added bonus, here's a photograph of my daughter (without whom THE HANDBOOK would not exist) holding aloft a copy of my aforementioned masterpiece. Both of these photos were taken on the momentous occasion of her eighteenth birthday...

 

You can hear me talking about the secret origins of THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK on multiple podcasts and radio shows including Steven Snider's THE FARM, Matthew M. K. Hopewell's THE AP STRANGE SHOW, and Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?

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 

 

"We've got plenty of people who think that they know best--better even than a given pregnant woman. We don't need more of them, but we could damn well use more examples of them turned into buffoons just like we get to see in the Handbook [...]. [The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook] is often weird, often funny, frightfully well written, and it gives us that unique satisfaction that only fiction can provide by putting the bastards into a magic circle of their own disinformation and locking them away. Isn't it sweet to think that they'd stay there."

 —Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings 

 

You can listen to the entire TEMDH commercial directly below... 

THE SUNDAY TIMES on Potential "Financial Crisis Sparked by Aliens"

From Marc Horne's 1-16-26 SUNDAY TIMES article entitled "Bank of England Must Plan for Financial Crisis Sparked by Aliens":

The Bank of England must plan for a financial crisis being triggered by an official announcement confirming the existence of alien life, one of its former policy experts has claimed.

Helen McCaw served as a senior analyst in financial security at the UK’s central bank, preparing for events that could impact the economy.

She has now written to Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s governor, urging him to organise contingencies for the possibility that the White House may one day confirm we are not alone in the universe.

McCaw, a Cambridge graduate, believes a declaration of that magnitude would send shockwaves through the markets and could trigger bank collapses and civil unrest [...].

McCaw has written a chapter on the subject for an upcoming book edited by Dr Alex Wendt, a professor of international security and political science at Ohio State University.

She had little interest in the subject of UFOs until she stumbled upon a peer-reviewed Nasa paper, entitled Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity, written by the astronomer and planetary scientist Dr Richard Stothers in 2021.

“I just thought it was a Hollywood thing and that it was only backwards people that saw them,” she said. “I didn’t know that governments were studying them.” 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

I Make My Debut Appearance on THE NEW BOOKS NETWORK!!!

The latest episode of THE NEW BOOKS NETWORK podcast just dropped! Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan (author of WRITING A RIOT: RIOT GRRL ZINES AND FEMINIST RHETORICS), this hour-plus episode covers my latest book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS (Headpress, 2025). Topics include Warner Bros., DC Comics, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Charlie Kirk, Stephen R. Bissette, TABOO, Darwinian Horror, the JFK assassination, MK-ULTRA mind control experiments, Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado, the westerns of Budd Boetticher, Randolph Scott, Vince Gilligan, BREAKING BAD, Cormac McCarthy, Jack Kirby, William S. Burroughs, the image of Native Americans in 1970s American horror films, Leonard Peltier, the American Indian Movement, John Frankenheimer's PROPHECY, Elliot Silverstein's THE CAR, and KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER! To listen to the entire episode, click HERE!!!

"Bizarre Fascist Right-Wing Stew"

Courtesy of the SAUCERS, SPOOKS & KOOKS YouTube channel...

OPERATION MINDFUCK:

 

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "MAGA Was a Big Lie"

From Sean James' 2-1-26 MEDIAITE post entitled "Marjorie Taylor Greene Bluntly Declares MAGA ‘Was All a Lie’ in Scalding Take on Trump’s GOP":

Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene went absolutely nuts on President Donald Trump in a new interview, branding his Make America Great Again movement a “big lie” and accusing the president of ignoring U.S. citizens so that he can focus on waging “war on behalf of Israel.”

The ex-lawmaker shared her eyebrow-raising thoughts in an interview with political commentator Kim Iversen on YouTube on Thursday.

“MAGA is — I think people are realizing it was all a lie. It was a big lie for the people,” Greene said.

She said Trump has completely turned on his base and is more worried about serving the “big big donors” who send money to his PACs and have pitched in for his new ballroom.

“Those are the people that get the special favors, the government contracts, they get the pardons,” Greene said. “And it’s the foreign countries that are running the show here. It’s the major big corporations and what is best for the world. That’s really what MAGA is.”

Greene then accused the president of caring more about Iran than what’s going on in the USA...

To read the entire post, click HERE. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES on Jan. 6th & Trump's "Zombie Army of Followers"

From Alan Feuer and Dan Barry's 1-5-26 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "For Many Jan. 6 Rioters, a Pardon From Trump Wasn’t Enough":

In the five years since the Capitol was stormed, no new facts have emerged to undermine the basic findings of congressional and Justice Department investigators that many of the rioters acted in the misguided belief, pushed relentlessly by Mr. Trump, that he had been robbed of victory in 2020 — and that in attacking the Capitol they not only injured about 140 police officers but also struck at a cornerstone of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Even so, Mr. Trump has long maintained that the rioters endured horrible, even illegal, mistreatment during their prosecutions.

And yet if that is true, some pardoned rioters are now asking, then why haven’t their persecutors been thrown in jail? And if the rioters are martyrs to a righteous cause, as the president and his allies have often said, then why haven’t they been made whole through financial reparations?

While this disillusionment is not universal, some so-called J6ers have even begun to ask why, after nearly a year in power, Mr. Trump’s law enforcement agencies have yet to provide any proof of the conspiracy theory they promoted to help him reclaim the presidency: that deep-state agents lured Trump supporters into storming the Capitol to derail the MAGA movement and justify political reprisals.

What J6ers rarely seem to acknowledge is the possibility that Mr. Trump’s government has failed to reveal the hidden truth about Jan. 6 because there is no hidden truth, no deep-state conspiracy, and therefore no legal reason to bring further charges related to the riot [...].

By feeding a steady diet of unfounded conspiracy theories not only to the J6ers but also to others in their base, Mr. Trump and his allies have spawned what some experts have likened to a zombie army of followers. And now, by failing to follow these theories to their logical conclusions, they are seeing that army begin to turn on them.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

James Grauerholz, R.I.P. (1952-2026)

From Oliver Harris' 1-2-26 obituary for James Grauerholz, the executor of William S. Burroughs' literary estate:

James’ extensive and outstanding work as an editor has never been recognised. It started early: in his introduction to the revised edition of The Adding Machine, James noted how closely he was already working with Burroughs from the mid-1970s on his columns for Crawdaddy magazine. More substantively, he worked from the original manuscripts to edit Junky, Queer, Interzone, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text (with Miles), My Education: A Book of Dreams, Last Words, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. He also co-edited, with Ira Silverberg, Word Virus, a Burroughs anthology, and contributed his original research to Miles’ landmark 2014 biography.

James’ erudition was impressively wide-ranging. At times, when I felt my own inadequacy, he knew just how to be supportive. While re-editing Queer for my 2010 edition, I asked him to review my introduction, worrying that, as a straight guy who didn’t really know the field of gay literature or queer studies, I might well have missed what mattered most. He wrote back to say (I paraphrase): ‘You’ve never been an addict, either, but that didn’t stop you doing Junky…’ It was pragmatic advice that helped me know my place and get the work done.

James got a lot done in the Burroughs universe. For a good while, ‘William Burroughs Communications’, led by James and staffed by a wonderful crew of helpers, brought the creative best out of Burroughs and ensured his legacy. But there were times while Burroughs was alive and, in the years after his death, when James regretted what that cost him, what was left undone in his own name. James will not be remembered for his music or his writing. But he will be remembered, and rightly so, with love.

To read the entire obituary, click HERE.

Happy Birthday, Melissa!!!

Callooh! Callay! Here at Cryptoscatology Headquarters we've been celebrating Melissa's birthday every January 31st for exactly 20 years now! In the earliest photo, you can see Melissa preparing to perform aggressive surgery on a birthday cake shaped like a bowl of Top Ramen. The cake is somewhat more modest in this latest photo but no less delicious. It was a frabjous birthday all around. Here's hoping for many more to come!!! Callooh! Callay!

 

HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD on... CONSPIRINORMAL!

I'm delighted to report that CONSPIRINORMAL is up and running again on a regular schedule, and I've just appeared on the latest episode with hosts Adam Sayne and Serfiel Stevenson! Topics include my most recent nonfiction book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS, as well as the 2020 Nashville bombing, shapeshifting police officers, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, Bob Brewer, Warren Getler, treasure hunting, James Shelby Downard, The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm, Egyptian Freemasonry, CORONADO'S CHILDREN, Harold T. Wilkins, FLYING SAUCERS ON THE ATTACK, The Hidden Hell Window, Richard Shaver, THE MALTESE FALCON, Bishop James Pike, Philip K. Dick, NATIONAL TREASURE, Charles Darwin, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, FRANKENSTEIN, Devo, predictive programming, the Revelation of the Method, Michael A. Hoffman, Marc Maron, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, AQUAMAN, Jack Parsons, Ray Bradbury, TWIN PEAKS, the Black Dahlia, the Zodiac Killer, Crispin Glover, and Scientology Santa! You can listen to this epic two-hour-plus interview in its entirety on YouTube...

Conspirinormal 502- Robert Guffey 6 (Hollywood Haunts the World)

 

Lilliputian Hallucinations

From Rachel Nuwer's 1-21-26 BBC article entitled "'They Saw Them on Their Dishes When Eating': The Mushroom Making People Hallucinate Dozens of Tiny Humans":

Only recently described by science, the mysterious mushrooms are found in different parts of the world, but they give people the same exact visions.

Every year, doctors at a hospital in the Yunnan Province of China brace themselves for an influx of people with an unusual complaint. The patients come with a strikingly odd symptom: visions of pint-sized, elf-like figures – marching under doors, crawling up walls and clinging to furniture.

The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August.

One must be careful to cook it thoroughly, though, otherwise the hallucinations will set in.

"At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'" says Colin Domnauer, a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, who is studying L. asiatica. "It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there" [...].

Domnauer is on a quest to solve the decades-old mysteries about this fungi species and identify the unknown compound responsible for its unusually similar hallucinations – as well as what it can potentially teach us about the human brain [...].

In a 1991 paper, two researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences described cases of people in Yunnan Province who had eaten a certain mushroom and experienced "lilliputian hallucinations" – the psychiatric term for the perception of tiny human, animal or fantasy figures. It is so named after the small people who inhabit the fictional Lilliput Island in the novel Gulliver's Travels.

The patients saw these figures "moving about everywhere", the researchers wrote – usually, there were more than ten tiny beings on the scene. "They saw them on their clothes when they were dressing and saw them on their dishes when eating," the researchers added. The visions "were even more vivid when their eyes were closed".

To read the entire article, click HERE.

NEW YORK TIMES: "Renee Good’s Family Should Be Able to Sue the Officer Who Killed Her"

From Erwin Chemerinsky and Burt Neuborne's 1-14-26 NEW YORK TIMES Op-Ed piece entitled "Renee Good’s Family Should Be Able to Sue the Officer Who Killed Her":

If Renee Good had been killed by a state or local police officer rather than an ICE agent, her family could sue the shooter for excessive force and violating her rights. But there is no law that allows federal officers to be sued for their constitutional violations. Congress should pass long-overdue legislation to fix this anomaly: a Renee Good Civil Rights Act.

Federal officials can be held criminally liable for their actions. But, because of the hole in federal law, civil suits against them struggle to move forward. In one case, the Supreme Court held that people who had been illegally thrown off the Social Security disability rolls and were left without income could not sue, even though they had been given no due process. In another, the court declared that a man dying of cancer after the prison repeatedly denied him any medical care could not sue. Similarly, the court ruled that people illegally detained after Sept. 11 and subjected to great abuse by prison guards had no remedy.

Yet for over 150 years, civil suits against state and local officials have been allowed. Soon after the Civil War, significant violations of civil rights, especially in the former rebel states, led Congress to recognize the need to empower federal courts to enforce the Constitution when it is violated by a state or local government. The Civil Rights Act of 1871 makes it a crime for state or local officers to use their authority “under color of law” to violate a person’s rights. The act also allows civil suits for monetary damages or injunctive relief against any state or local employees who, in the course of their work, violate the Constitution or federal laws.

That second provision, known as Section 1983, is the basis for virtually all lawsuits against state and local governments and officials who violate the Constitution. If a city adopts an ordinance that violates the First Amendment, a citizen can sue the city under Section 1983. If a police officer uses excessive force, which the Supreme Court has held violates the Fourth Amendment, the victim can sue the officer under Section 1983. Section 1983 suits account for a significant part of the workload of federal courts.

But Section 1983 applies only to those acting under the authority of state law. That is why the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd, could be sued under Section 1983. (Mr. Floyd’s family did sue Mr. Chauvin and others, and the lawsuit was settled for $27 million.) The ICE officer who killed Renee Good cannot be sued under that statute.

There is no comparable federal law that allows suits against federal officers who violate the Constitution.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

I Make My Debut Appearance on HI, STRANGENESS!!!

The latest episode of Steve Berg's HI, STRANGENESS podcast just dropped! Here's Steve's description of this nearly two-hour-long interview:

"HI friends! This week, my guest is the legendary fringe culture author, Robert Guffey! Robert has been writing about conspiracy culture for years now, and has contributed a lot of wildly fascinating stories, books, and magazine articles to this field of interest. On this episode, we spend most of the time discussing his new book HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD, which focuses on encoded cinema and cultural taboos. I don't want to spoil too much here, but we get into intel agencies involvement in screenwriting, things you can say in fiction, but not in real life, and a whole lot more. Being a deep fan of cinema history, I have to say that this one hit the spot perfectly for me. Enjoy!" 

Topics include Charles Fort, the Clarion Writers Workshop, Jack Womack, THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, James Randi, Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, CHAMELEO, Stephen R. Bissette, TABOO, Charles Darwin, TWIN PEAKS, Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, Marjorie Cameron, George Adamski, William S. Burroughs, PSYCHIC SELF-DEFENSE, the Black Dahlia, Musso & Frank, the JFK assassination, WE'RE WE CONTROLLED?, Jose Delgado, Curt Siodmak, CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN, Roky Erickson, Heaven's Gate, the OSS, SPIES & SAUCERS, HAMLET, THE GAMMA PEOPLE, Robert Aldrich, Nelson Rockefeller, Albert Broccoli, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, WINTER KILLS, Richard Condon, THE PARALLAX VIEW, Loren Singer, Permindex, Ted Kennedy, John Huston, and NOMENCLATURE OF AN ASSASSINATION CABAL! To listen to the entire episode, click HERE!!!