MY GOAT

2011-10-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

MY GOAT #4

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FURTHER THOUGHTS ON JOSHUA KOMISARJEVSKY AND THE CONNECTICUT HOME INVASION MURDERS

The clarity of intention with which Joshua Komisarjevsky writes his analysis of his actions is astounding. His hand-written testimony, replete with spelling errors (presumably it is a "first draft" and represents the pure stream of consciousness) and dramatic flourishes, is poetic and tragic. His partner Steven Hayes seems to be a distant character to Komisarjevsky, a sad soul aligned with him in mayhem by fate. It is difficult to tell how much of the confession is genuine and how much seeks to distance the killer from his actions, designed to obscure the confession with a dignified and poetic air of a man trapped in a situation beyond his ability to control it. In the face of the world, he is a miscreant, with few accomplishments in life, who has crossed the barrier of society into some of the most basic acts of criminal aggression that haunt our society. It seems from the recollections of both men that the plan for the robbery aspect of the home invasion was vague and uninformed. This resulted in the fatal mistake of sending a member of the family out into public to get more money from the bank (and therefore giving Mrs. Hawke-Petit the opportunity to alert the authorities of what was happening in her home).
It seems obvious that the two men had a death wish and were putting themselves into a suicidal situation, dragging down the Petit family with them into a personal landscape of hell. Both men claim that the murders were spontaneous acts, and that they did not premeditatively plan to harm the family. This claim, however, is refuted by the fact that the duo brought with them gasoline to the house, indicating a desire to burn to a crisp the witnesses and all other evidence of their crime. Texts from Hayes to Komisarjevsky show an almost childlike glee, as Hayes expresses tension, bursting from the seams with excitement in preparation for the destruction of the docile existence of a suburban family. As his partner puts his own child to bed, "Steeve" excitedly texted him, saying that he needed "a margarita" to relax him. In order to properly put himself in the mood for what he would accomplish within the next twelve hours, he actively deranged his senses with alcohol and lack of sleep. Something deep within the man was bubbling up, waiting for a chance to break out into the world around him. It is interesting in Komisarjevsky's accounts of the crimes that he takes the pose of a passive observer, but in actuality demonstrates a great ability to manipulate and confuse the emotions of his audience (including Hayes and the Petit family).
In the world that we live in, we are surrounded by predators. A nightmarish end was dealt to a family who did absolutely nothing to distinguish themselves from another, other than offer an appealing target to two men in search of a thrill not yet attained. It is doubtful that either Joshua or Steven found exactly what it was that they were looking for, even in the stark and brutal reality of the events that occurred. Their fantasy thrill-ride over an unsuspecting family provided no answers, only further torment and confusion. The long and oppressive night of fear must have been like waking into a nightmare for the girls especially. As all of their schoolmates and neighbors were going about their day, the two Petit daughters smothered to death from smoke inhalation tied to their beds. The memory of the unmistakable sounds of the rape and strangulation murder of their mother was likely still lingering in their heads during the final moments of their life, as all moral function and meaning in their short lives was extinguished in smoldering death. There will be no more vacations or family dinners for the Petits. The father seems to have experienced a heavy enough beating to the head such that it is possible he could have lingering brain damage. The description of the beatings in Komisarjevsky's testimony seem to transcend time and space. Likely Joshua Komisarjevsky will receive the death penalty as well for his actions, reaching the final "embrace everlasting" that he sought in his high-speed collision with the police barricade exiting the smoking home of the Petit family.
Joshua represents an unapologetic and unconcientious strain that runs through the youth of the United States. It is a nihilistic irony that his last action before committing these acts of home invasion and murder was to tuck his own child in to bed. He represents the deadening of ourselves to each other, the transformation of the active self into a passive observer reacting to images on a screen. A faceless denial of the horror of reality. Komisarjevsky found within himself a desire to commit acts of horror, in an attempt to overcome the horror of life. Denial of sympathy and of self, culminating in the destruction of other people's lives in a search for meaning. Ultimately, Joshua will still find only death, and whatever unpleasant things come his way beforehand in prison. The experience for the family themselves was so hellish and beyond expectations that surely the case will be used to make an example out of the offenders. A death sentence for Komisarjevsky indicates to others in our society that these sort of actions are simply not acceptable, regardless of any romantic notions of rehabilitation. To imagine the last hours of the females of the Petit household, waking up to the control of two lonely and deranged men at the end of all human understanding or sympathy, is a picture of the breakdown of our society. The rise of the dehumanizing, thrill-seeking urge within America (pumped into the home through the television and internet) threatens to wash everything that made America great in a flood of sewage and spent seed. Anyone who has experienced true hours of fear, the moments in suspended animation and frozen time before something truly terrible happens, knows intimately the transition between life and death that the Petit family were present to experience. It is a constant drama occurring all over the world. Somewhere tonight, someone is having their selfish zero hour, putting innocent people at risk in order to live out a desire for a personal space between life and death. Getting closer to a personal thrill satisfying a deep-rooted need. The masses swarm with such filth, the maddening crowd of disenfranchised and depressed who seek to have what they perceive others are keeping from them. In reality, they represent a black hole of want and "need" that leads to their own dissatisfaction and horror.

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...And on the Earth there would be a river of tears which flowed through all things, a sadness that man and woman alike would momentarily dip into and drink from the waters of salty knowledge...

RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS:
THE STORY OF JEFFERY DAHMER
(Part Two, Jeffery Joins The Army)

"Bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky... I know this love of mine will never die." - The Beatles

One of the investigators involved in the Richard Ramirez "Night Stalker" case said something about the young man along the lines of "Murder is his job, and he is very good at it. I have a job, you have a job, and he has a job. His job is to kill people."

"I trained myself to view people as potential objects of pleasure." - Jeffery Dahmer

Welcome back to the ongoing story of that all-American boy who just wanted to get closer to his neighbors, Jeffery Lionel Dahmer. In part one of our little excursion through the life of America's favorite non-fictional cannibal, we saw a young boy with a deep sensitivity for nature and a masked contempt for his fellow humans. We began with the world's introduction to Dahmer, the police exhumation of the grisly contents of his apartment upon his arrest, and examined a distanced and disturbed youth. This upbringing eventually led to the brutal murder and evisceration of one of the unluckiest hitchhikers of the 1970s, Steven Hicks. Dahmer spent an uneventful childhood distanced from his younger brother, as well as a pair of unloving parents who most of all did not love each other. After their eventual divorce, Dahmer was completely abandoned by his mother and experienced a complete disconnect from his peers during his college experience. Dahmer's first act of murder was composed as a silent cry within a desperate rage. He found himself taking out all of his fear and frustration on this man whose body he wished to hold and caress, through at least just one night. This one indulgence of personal desire on the part of Dahmer cost the young Hicks his life. This act was excused and pardoned by a slowly segmenting mind that would push Dahmer to justify and excuse his acts of murder in a pathological manner later in life. Developing a severe alcoholism for the time being, Dahmer had decided to become a self-absorbed and even "demonic" person oriented toward a desire for exerting his own personal desires over the will of others. He committed his first act of murder in 1978 on a person that he was able to distinguish from himself as an "other," taking offense to the idea of independence and the young man having the urge to want to leave young Dahmer after the kindness that Jeffery showed him by taking him in and trying to make a connection. The sadistic urge to "prank" those around him would evolve and mutate as he made his way toward adulthood, with murder and the subsequent ritualized cover-up and deception being his ongoing hobby and obsession. It would not be until 1987 that Dahmer would again commit a murder that he would admit to, but he would in the meantime be keeping himself quite busy, and with little attempt to disguise his inner turmoil.

A RIVER OF TEARS

"Nobody wants him, he just stares at the world... planning his vengeance, which he soon will unfurl." - Black Sabbath "Iron Man"

"I'll pretend that I'm kissing the lips that I am missing and hope that my dreams will come true... and then when I'm away I'll write home everyday, and I'll send all my loving to you." - The Beatles

The world proved cruel to the boy, and perhaps Dahmer wished to regain his composure by being the cruelest. Dahmer's grades in school were beyond sub-par, he had become a student deemed perhaps most likely to commit suicide. He had no friends in college, and remained deeply saddened on a constant basis. Dahmer drowned his sadness out with alcohol, which worked to varying degrees but ultimately resulting in the exposure of his heretofore hidden vices to the world (such as his various arrests for drunk and disorderly behavior, occasionally accompanied by indecent exposure charges typically involving the presence of a minor). He was depressed by the complete abandonment that he experienced from his mother, who had taken him and his brother without telling the father, and then abandoned Jeffery to his own devices while making off with Jeffery's brother David. Although Jeffery had no dislike for his younger brother, and even was loving towards him and helped out relating to him around the house, he did not maintain any relationship with David or even mention him to others that he spoke to in his adult life. Whatever love Dahmer's mother had reserved for his younger brother seemed to drive an unbridgeable gap between the two siblings. In fact, Dahmer's army bunkmate Billy Capshaw did not even know that Dahmer had a brother, despite Dahmer's constant talk about his mother and father. Capshaw noted that Dahmer talked about his father constantly, and his desire to please him, and how was tragically unable to. Dahmer's failed attempt at college resulted in him being expelled for bad grades after being questioned about the theft of a watch, and some other items from a roommate. When quizzed by his father, Dahmer's roommates revealed that Jeffery was drunk constantly and would even sell his plasma to the nearby blood bank in order to obtain more money for liquor. After an arrest back home for drunk and disorderly conduct, his father dragged Jeffery to an Army recruitment center where he signed up for active duty in the military. Dahmer was somewhat defeated in his decision (which was forced on him by his irate father), but retained a desire to become a military policeman. Dahmer, who at the tender age of 18 had already become a murderer of the most compulsive sort by his own choice, sought to have the authority over others that he despised in those who had authority over him. In his prankster nature, he saw in the role of the lawman an authority and power that could lift him from his personal station in life.
On January 12, 1979, Dahmer reported for active duty at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama. He was soon reassigned to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he was trained as a medical specialist. His six-month medical training would prove incredibly valuable to him in adult hobbies of murder and dismemberment. Although his murder of Steven Hicks the previous year was unplanned, he expertly carried out the disposal of the body without detection even without any formal medical training. His training at Fort Sam Houston would enable Dahmer to become the scientifically precise "monster" that so shocked the world during his arrest and trial in the early 1990s. His teacher, Linda Swisher, remembers him well: "He was extremely anti-social... He could have been a serial rapist." She has a particularly strong memory of a day when Dahmer was removing a fake liver from a resuscitation dummy for a test, and being disturbed by a gleeful smile on his face that accompanied what she described as an "icy stare" in his eyes. Jeffery completed his classes with good grades, and was shipped out to Baumholder, West Germany to serve in the 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division in the United States Army. He was regarded by his fellow recruits as someone who wore his uniform with pride but spent his private life just getting drunk and listening to Black Sabbath.
According to some who served with Dahmer, he would begin drinking once he awoke and not stop intoxicating himself until he passed out. He was notorious for his impressive and nearly superhuman ability to intake alcohol. Strange occurrences around him were oddly disregarded, such as the disappearance of a local German named Hans who was last seen drinking with Dahmer. Hans turned up dead thirty miles from the base, his intestines pulled out and severed in a manner familiar to researchers of Dahmer's later murders. Jefferey was seen arriving back to the base with blood on him by his roommate on multiple occasions. He was using whatever authority he had in order to get away with a reckless and almost suicidal lifestyle, which eventually led to his being discharged for his shameful behavior. A major catalyst for this was his being caught exposing himself to German children in a nearby public park. Dahmer would excuse this activity by saying that he was simply "trying to urinate" while two boys came up to him asking him if he was ok. Dahmer would be arrested twice in his lifetime again for this crime back home in America, and who knows how many other times he did this sort of thing without being caught. There was a certain aspect of exhibitionistic behaviour in his activities, still showing a bit of the devilish mischief apparent in his youthful pranking but grown to monstrous proportions. In the same public park where Dahmer was caught exposing himself to children, several bodies of people would turn up mutilated and maimed, including several women. One such woman was a nurse at the base who had some knowledge of misdeeds that Dahmer had enacted, as well the decomposed body of a young thin African American male (dubbed "Pond Man" due to his skin being completely waterlogged upon his discovery). When Dahmer was on base and not on duty, he spent almost all of his time getting completely wasted, listening to heavy metal on his headphones. He would often miss meals and get-togethers under his regimen of hard rock and heavy drinking. In the later part of 1979, Dahmer would become a major fixture in the life of new Army recruit William Capshaw during his stay in Baumholder.

""At that young age I didn't know how to deal with it. My commander did not believe me. Nobody helped me, even though I begged and begged and begged... I've talked to a lot of men, many of them soldiers, who are raped but who won't go public with their story. The shame alone is overwhelming." - Billy Capshaw, roommate of Jeffery Dahmer in Baumholder, Germany.

At the point in his life that Capshaw arrived, Dahmer had ingratiated himself with a superior in the nearby barracks and received quite a bit of authority and leeway in his assignments. When Capshaw was placed under Jeffery's authority, Dahmer used his position to keep Capshaw in a state of permanent ownership. Capshaw was kept as Dahmer's bunkmate with no assignments or connection to friends or family back home. During his time in the Army, he was raped and beaten by Dahmer on a regular basis, as Jeffery took out all of his fear and anger on the young man. Meanwhile, back home, his family rung up hundreds of dollars in phone bills attempting to reach their son, being unable to hear any news from him. He says that Dahmer would often keep him locked in the room alone, at times tied up in some capacity, and that he seemed to be living out a personal fantasy of having a slave, using Capshaw as his servant. According to Capshaw, Dahmer would sometimes beat him mercilessly in these incidents, and would then have to call paramedics when he had gone too far. When faced with the questions of other medics, Dahmer was somehow able to turn on his charm and convince outsiders that whatever had happened to Capshaw was an accident or just "horseplay." As absurd as these claims may sound, it is consistent with Dahmer's later ability to convince Wisconsin police that a naked, bleeding 14-year-old boy who escaped his home was his "boyfriend" and that they were simply having a "lovers quarrel." Something about Dahmer made people want to trust him, despite whatever evidence was staring them in the face. The stories told by Capshaw show Dahmer as an emotionally volatile person filled with an immense sadness. As he drank extreme amounts, he would become deeply emotional and begin to weep. Dahmer would then open up to Capshaw, talking about his loneliness and his desire to please his father. Their relationship was complex, with Dahmer seeming to view himself as some sort of a mentor to Billy Capshaw. His anger and sadism stemmed from a deeply hurt ego, lashing out at the world the way that he felt that it lashed out at him. Another curious set of occurrences during Dahmer's stay in Baumholder is the presence of several people who were treated in the Medical center for brutal, unsolved rapes, where they were severely beaten in the process of the sexual assault. According to Capshaw, Dahmer would often be brought back to the base in a drunken state by German police, who would then hand him off to the US Military Police, who would then just send Dahmer back to his barracks. Several times he returned with clothes missing, including once when he was returned to the base wearing only boxer shorts. His behavior was dismissed by his superiors because of his friendship with a commanding officer, which Capshaw believes was primarily a sexual relationship. One day (after what must have seemed like an eternity of abuse to the young Capshaw) this relationship dried up for some reason. PFC Dahmer was sent packing back to the United States with a military discharge due to his excessive alcohol abuse. According to others present, Dahmer had to be dragged out of his bunk yelling and screaming, in complete denial and anger regarding his failure as a military officer. Capshaw awoke that day to find himself reassigned, bizarrely taken out of the nightmare that he had been living, thanks to Dahmer's expulsion from the Army for being a drunken, insane person. It would be much later that Capshaw was able to muster up the courage to tell his story of rape and sadism under the thumb of his brutal bunkmate. Capshaw maintained that he kept the truth to himself out of a deep shame for what had occurred. Also, one of the only people that he had told about the abuse turned up mutilated and dead near the base according to Capshaw's testimony. For his trauma, Billy Capshaw was awarded "partial disability" upon his leave from the Army. This was upgraded to a "full disability" in the early 1990s once the news of Dahmer's exceptional level of sadistic brutality made headlines.

"Someday you'll hear about me again." - Jeffery Dahmer to his squad leader, upon accepting the terms of his discharge from the United States Army.

Rejected by the authority that he was revelling in, Dahmer was extremely angry and humiliated to be sent back to the United States a a civilian after having a taste of the authority that he craved. He could not bear to see his father, and wanted to deliver the news of his exit from the Army in a place physically removed from the overbearing parents that he feared the disapproval of. Offered the opportunity to be sent anywhere in the United States, Dahmer for some reason asked to be sent to Florida, perhaps the farthest place he could think of from his midwestern upbringing. He was initially shipped out to South Carolina, but weeks after his expulsion his family received a phone call from Dahmer saying that he was in Miami, Florida. Shortly after arriving there he had already blown his stipend from the Army and spent several nights camping out on the beach facing the Gulf of Mexico. Depressed and alone, Dahmer got a job at a sandwich shop ("Sunshine Subs") and worked long hours to support his alcohol habit and other living expenses. Oddly, it was here in Florida that he would make one of the only friends of his adult life, a British woman named Julie who lived in the United States. She attempted to convince Dahmer to marry her so that she could become a US citizen, but Dahmer was not easily convinced. In an odd bit of information that seems to help corroborate much of William Capshaw's other information about Dahmer, Capshaw claims that Dahmer called him one day out of the blue from Florida while Billy was still stationed in Baumholder. According to Capshaw, Dahmer was bragging and excited about having a girlfriend and having slept with her. Apparently at this stage in his life, even after all of the events up to this point, Dahmer was in deep denial of his homosexuality, which he attempted to purge at any cost. This makes some sort of sense out of the chaotic events that occurred Dahmer's military experience- in the throes of a violently homophobic denial of aspects of himself that were clearly driving his actions, he lashed out in anger and power-hungry madness. Along with a desire to create a companion that would not leave him (by killing someone and keeping their body), he also was symbolically (through his own distorted view of the world) attempting to kill the homosexual urges within himself. However, this time brief respite in Florida from his military career would be only a side note in Dahmer's prolific roller-coaster ride through life, albeit one that would contribute a healthy level of mystery to the overall Dahmer experience. Enter America's Most Wanted little freckle-faced boy, Adam Walsh, the literal "poster boy" for the child abduction scare of the 1980s, and an unsolved murder that continues to nag at experts to this day.

"Once I saw that picture of Dahmer, I said, `That's him... that's who I saw (back in 1981).'" - Janice Santamassino, witness present at the Hollywood Mall during the time of Adam Walsh's abduction.

The murder of Adam Walsh has been formally attributed to Ottis Toole, the illiterate and deformed side-kick of infamous boaster Henry Lee Lucas. Lucas is widely known for taking credit for hundreds of murders that he could not possibly have been linked to. Lucas' confessions were eagerly lapped up by lawmen looking to solve a multitude of missing persons cases. Toole was not far behind him, and his "confession" of murdering Walsh came immediately after a television special about the event aired during prime time. Toole (who could not read or write at a high school level) also claimed to be part of an elite society of Satanists who drank the blood of virgins in elite rituals. No evidence has ever been found supporting this or many of his other claims. An interview with him that appeared in the Florida death-obsessed comic "Boiled Angel" shows Toole to be a sensationalist and a con-man, a lifestyle prisoner looking for fame and infamy within the big house. His information in the interview regarding the effects of sodomy seems to be directly plagiarized from the works of the Marquis De Sade and William Burroughs' readily available "Naked Lunch." Toole's confessions of elite Satanic rituals reek of dime-store horror and unreal happenings. Very much the opposite of the soft-spoken and low-key Dahmer, who lived out fantasies in his private time that Toole likely only dreamed of. Toole even denied committing the murder later in life when visited by a prosecutor from Hollywood, Florida shortly before his death. For his own part, Dahmer has never taken credit for committing the murder of Walsh, but there is widespread speculation regarding his possible affiliation with the incident. Not only does the case bear evidence of his personal inclinations, Dahmer himself was placed at the scene by several eyewitnesses (none of whom mention the presence of a man resembling Toole, incidentally, a ogre-like and awkward man who resembles a monster from a children's story - Toole was identified by a completely separate witness as being at the mall that day, but her testimony has not been verified by other witnesses). It is possible that Dahmer did not admit to the murder (if he did indeed commit it) out of concern for ramifications within the prison walls (Dahmer was known as a murderer of men, not little boys, although he was indeed repeat offender when it came to exposing himself to and abusing young boys). After denying his role in the murder upon questioning, Dahmer quickly followed it up by asking investigators if Florida had a death penalty for that specific crime. He suggested to the interviewer that he would admit to the crime if it meant that he could get the death penalty. He also said that he could not have possibly committed the murder because at the time he lived many miles from the town where the abduction took place, and had no vehicle that he could use to get there.

"Nothing to do with it." - Jeffery Dahmer's response to being asked if he had been responsible for the death of Adam Walsh

According to Dahmer's boss at the subway shop, there was a large blue van that belonged to the store that employees would often borrow for days at a time. Witness Janice Santamassino claims that she nearly collided with this blue van due to it being parked illegally outside the mall. Another man named Bill Bowen claimed to see Dahmer struggling to put a young boy into this same van on the same day. Santamassino reports seeing a man in kahki Army-style fatigues attempting to talk to a young boy in the video arcade. When she saw the news of the missing boy that night, she says that she recognized the child as Walsh. Another person, Terry Keaton, who would have been ten years old at the time, reported being nearly abducted that same day by a tall, thin man wearing kakhi army fatigues. At the time the parents suspected a security guard due to their similar outfits, but the grown Terry maintains that the man who attempted to abduct him was Dahmer. Little Adam Walsh's head turned up floating in a drainage canal, and his body was never found. One of Jeffery's favored modes of sexual excitation a few years later in life (besides caressing human innards) was using a severed head to perform fellatio on himself. Later on, when he began to kill on a regular, fetishized basis, he would keep the heads of the victims as trophies, stripping them down to the skull and keeping it as a masturbation aid. As a young man, he kept the heads of several animals as trophies in this manner as well, and he appeared to have a particular fascination with the process of beheading. If Dahmer sexually victimized the young Walsh's body, it would not be the first or last time that Dahmer would sexually victimize a child. Although Dahmer claimed to the contrary during his lifetime, the speculation regarding his possible role in this case has fascinated many investigators. This murder could be an aberration from the norm that sheds light on many of his hidden proclivities, and a shame within him so deep that he could not confess it even after admitting to many equally heinous crimes. The inability to discuss it could show a disturbance within him, a regret so deep and personal that Dahmer perhaps felt fully overcome by the evil forces that he told court psychiatrists had taken over him. Whatever of Dahmer's extracurricular activities were being explored were ultimately leading him down a dead end, as he found himself unable to sustain himself financially. Back at his father's house, the festering corpse of Steven Hicks lay in wait for Dahmer's return, for him to fulfill what would seem to be his destiny back home.

"Where can you run to? What more can you do? No more tomorrow, life is killing you. Dreams turns to nightmares, heaven turns to hell. Words of confusion, nothing more to tell..." -Black Sabbath

Throughout his attempts at bachelorhood in Southern Florida, Dahmer maintained a close phone relationship with his stepmother Shari. Although they had disagreements about Dahmer's drunken lifestyle, she was someone that Jeffery respected very much as a person, and he looked to her for help and advice. She made a peaceful mediator between the boy and his father throughout Dahmer's stay in Florida (Lionel was surely rather upset about his son's expulsion from the Army, but probably not very shocked). One day, upon hitting rock bottom, Dahmer called Shari asking for money and she offered him a ticket home instead. He managed to show up drunk and unkempt once he arrived off the plane, but soon proved to be kind and helpful to his stepmother and father around the house. Dahmer was apparently feeling contrite and, seeking approval from the closest person that he had in his life to a loving mother, adopted a "good son" persona in his dealings with Shari and his father Lionel. In the meantime, Dahmer excavated and finally disposed of the remains of murdered hitchhiker Steven Hicks, four years after murdering the young man and sexually satisfying himself with Hicks' corpse. Despite his desire to be "good," Dahmer was overpowered by a deafening guilt that pushed him back to his Dionysian drinking habits in order to drown out his memories and urges, which were a constant presence in his life. Although Dahmer exhibited sadistic tendencies and would be inclined to hurt and overpower others, he felt deeply sorrowful afterwards, as if something horrible had just "come over" him. He felt sympathy for not only his victims (whom he, in some ways, loved and sympathized with) but also for the families that he affected, but this sorrow and guilt was directed inward. Dahmer did not seem to be able to fully identify with the sort of emotions that welled up as a result of his impulses, and would attempt to blind his mind's eye with insane amounts of constant alcohol binging. Dahmer was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, and would often arrive home without his glasses or wallet (and once the family car) claiming that he "forgot" where he put them. Dahmer faced rejection yet again when, in a bid to introduce some sort of structure to his life, he was sent by Lionel and Shari to live with and take care of his elderly grandmother in Wisconsin. It was in this house, under the auspices of the home of a kindly old lady and her loving, charming-but-troubled grandson, that Dahmer would begin to develop his plan for a systemized, ritualistic method of murder and body disposal that would escalate exponentially until the beginning of the next decade. The freedom that Dahmer experienced under the authority of his kind and loving grandmother enabled him to explore his fantasy life in a way that he had not been able to since he was a child, playing the self-invented "Infinity Land" game with friends. Dahmer was soon to engage in a a real-life version of this game, where many who came into contact with him would be taken into a black hole of victimhood, becoming trophies and objects of pleasure for a bottomless appetite.

JEFFERY DAHMER MOVES TO GRANDMA'S HOUSE IN WEST ALLIS, WISCONSIN

"Everything around you, whats it coming to?... Living just for dying, dying just for you..." - Black Sabbath

Jeffery was somewhat relieved to be away from his father Lionel, whom he had a deeply uncomfortable relationship with since the divorce of his parents. In 1982, he moved into the house of his grandmother (Catherine Dahmer, his father's mother) in West Allis, Wisconsin, to help her around the house and hopefully stay out of trouble. Dahmer apparently joined an Alcoholics Anonymous group in a fit of loneliness, but found within the organization something that gave him strength and enabled him to have a desire to do something more with his life. He got a job soon after arriving in Wisconsin as a phlebotomist, the person who takes blood at a local blood bank. In the job, he utilized his skills that he learned training as an Army medic, and performed his duties with little enthusiasm. Once while alone in the blood bank lab, Dahmer drank a small amount of blood, hoping to achieve some sort of excitement from injesting the fluid, but found no sexual stimulation or thrill whatsoever from the act of blood drinking. Dahmer found himself afloat in an existential situation, suppressing his desires but at the same time numbing his own emotions in order to become a productive member of society. He was let go from the job due to poor performance and soon found himself drunk and exposing his genitals ("Indecent Exposure," carrying the hefty fine of $50) in public yet again, this time at the Wisconsin State Fair. His arrest in this incident caused him to make a serious attempt to "straighten his life out" and he decided to begin joining his grandmother in her weekly visits to church.
From 1983-1985, Dahmer claims that he was able to suppress his desires by devoting himself fully to the church and Bible studies. It appears that the young boy fascinated with the passion of Christ as a youth never fully let go of his affinity for the myth and mystery of Christianity. Whatever it meant to him at the time, Dahmer appears to have sincerely embraced religion during this phase of his life, even choosing to be born again in an hour of witness that must have greatly pleased his grandmother and her friends. Although he is reported to have been extremely distrustful of others and unable to make lasting friendships, Dahmer did appear to manage to keep himself out of trouble during the time that he was involved with his grandmother Catherine's church. It was during this phase in his life that Dahmer managed to find gainful employment that would last him almost the rest of his life outside prison walls. On January 14th, 1985, Jeffery Dahmer was hired as a chocolate mixer by the Ambrosia Chocolate Company, where he worked Sunday through Friday from 11:00 PM until 7:00 AM. For some reason, he was able to keep this job for the next five years, an aberration in a life typified by drop-out and failure to meet responsibilities. Perhaps simply because of a lack of people willing to work such alienating hours all night at a chocolate factory, Jeffery managed to find a lucrative position that he was comfortable in and unable to mess up for a while. The money that he earned from the job eventually enabled him to move out on his own and more fully explore the desires still welling up deep within.

"Now the time is here for our man to spread fear, vengeance from the grave, kill the people he once saved." - Black Sabbath

Among other factors tugging at Dahmer's conscience, his innate homosexual urges (as well as a deep-rooted self-hatred resulting from this tendency) tugged him away from his newly adopted persona as a born again Christian. Despite his desires to go "straight," Dahmer would soon find himself compelled to leave behind the sterile world of church groups and bible meetings for a return to a search for personal satisfaction. In this process, he would maintain his position at the chocolate factory for the purpose of keeping up appearances while he explored the darkest and most buried impulses within him. Nine years after his first murder (of traveler Steven Hicks), he would begin a path of personal exploration that would take him from his childhood Christianity to a sort of Scientific Atheism that brought him to the conclusion that his impulses were based in some sort of evolutionary aspect of humanity. He embraced a Darwinistic view of humanity, where the shrewd and intellectual elite of humanity control the weak and undeveloped lower classes. He eventually framed his personal impulses under the guise of an evolutionary intervention, a cosmic prank upon humanity from an intrepid and clever person on the cutting edge of a hypocritical and confused humanity. Within humanity he saw the same bitter contradictions that he saw within himself, and within himself he saw nothing to love or sympathize with.

(Next chapter: Dahmer hits the dating scene, manages to get banned from every bath house in Wisconsin, and learns how to preserve a human head in the next thrilling chapter of The Jeffery Dahmer Story.)

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WALL MANIACS
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I AM NOT WELL:
SLAUGHTER-FETUS TOUR 2011

I have read a lot of different philosophies on life and spirituality, and have come to the conclusion that no one has figured it out yet. In fact, the very nature of human thought-process encourages any scientific or spiritual discovery to be accompanied immediately by vast limitations to understanding. More fruitful has been my independent research in the realms of art and music, the religions of the ecstatic and transformative nature of humans' relationship with the environment around them. Important in understanding the philosophies of "noise" or industrial music is an understanding of the futurists, the Dada movement, and surrealism from the early part of the last century. Classical concepts of art were abstracted by people like Francis Bacon and Salvador Dali in order to express realities of existence that were outside the realms of the immediately available senses. The deranged forms of Bacon's figures suggested movement and force trapped in a dimension beyond height, width, and depth. Throughout the same hundred years, the concept of electronic music, including the technologies of recording and 'audio collage art,' has become a part of both the popular and academic spectrum of music. After singing in a punk/metal band and being a primary songwriter for a industrial/synth duo (both operating out of New Orleans), Hurricane Katrina and it's dislocating effect on me caused me to go into deep contemplation regarding the nature of the music that I was producing. I listened to anything interesting that I could get my hands on and studied it thouroughly: Moroder-style techno, "krautrock," tibetan ritul music, early industrial, ancient European music, French pop music, hardcore punk, bounce and old-school rap, minimalist composition, new electronic music from the Congo, black metal (of which I had been a fan for some time, but really delved into the complexities of the more recent artists in the genre during that period of time), free jazz, early electronic music and whatever else I could get my hands on. Anything that had the rawness and authenticity that I was seeking. In that time, I developed a personal sense of aesthetics and what 'felt right' to me that has lived on in my current work.
Lately my stuff has been existing within the "harsh noise" genre, the concept of which has proven to be very alienating to many who previously enjoyed aspects of my work in the past. I was familiar with the genre, especially the more well-known Japanese artists (Merzbow, Masonna, C.C.C.C. et al) and notorious American acts such as Macronympha and Black Leather Jesus. However, my overriding and most pervasive influence in this realm was the early work of post-Industrial (in the sense of Throbbing Gristle/Monte Cazzaza/SPK being "true Industrial" like the record label Industrial Records) artists such as Whitehouse and Non. Whitehouse greatly influenced me with their powerful, stripped down minimalist and vicious aesthetic that seemed to be a pure white-hot expression of individualism and passion. Their filthy De Sade-inspired lyrics were a breath of fresh air and seemed very honest and truthful when I first heard "Thank Your Lucky Stars" and "Sadist" at the age of 18. Boyd Rice's early work solo and with Non seemed to come from a similar individualized expression of the inner self, with a complex and evolving logic expressed in a similarly minimalist manner. Pushing something out from within. This strongly appealed to me and brought my music to a more and more minimalist direction over the years. I have faith in a constant hand that has guided me in this direction over the years. There are times of doubt and reconsideration, but over the years this faith has remained unwavering. I got to see Whitehouse on one of their last appearances in the United States on two gigs with Wolf Eyes and Pig Destroyer in Washington DC and Brooklyn. Wolf Eyes really impressed me with their laid back and constantly evolving performance, which reminded me of a free-jazz approach to industrial and noise music. I bought several of their small-run handmade releases, which seemed to come from an endless discography. Their prolific and exploratory style was fascinating to me, although it alienated some of my friends that I attempted to introduce their music to. In this stuff I found sonically the same kind of power that I experienced from great artists like Hermann Nitsch and Bacon, great filmmakers like David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. A powerful examination of the unexplainable through art. I am fascinated with this kind of thing, and so that is whats up with my interest in that direction of life.
Slaughter-Fetus is an Industrial Harsh Noise wall group started by my wife and I. We have several projects together, and originally the moniker of Slaughter-Fetus was affixed to an over-the-internet collaboration with another Louisiana noise artist who expressed interest in collaborating with us. The name is inspired by the idea of the starchild in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey." At the end of the movie, we see the astronaut Dave Bowman manifested in the form of a giant fetus suspended in space jelly. In the book this image is followed by Bowman fetus turning all of the Earth's nuclear missiles against the planet, suggesting that life will be re-created and started anew. We had two practice sessions/recordings occur at the Human Ignorance headquarters with this line-up, one of which was released unedited as "Tribute To Eihi Shiina." We played several shows with this three-person lineup in Texas, but unfortunately there were apparently some creative differences that caused this other member of the group to exit rather abruptly. Ultimately it seemed like it was the end for a little noise group called Slaughter-Fetus.
Enter Octagon founder and one-man PE militia Thomas Mortigan, also known as RU-486. Thomas is an affable, sleeveless-shirted gentleman with a blonde buzz-cut and the physical appearance of an SS Officer hiding out within the metal community in order to escape the Mossad. He and fellow Mississippi noise artist Leeann Rogers (Biological Girl, Hierchiss) attended both of Slaughter-Fetus' Texas performances, and at a nearly 24-hour noise festival/art show in Dallas we shared a merch table together, giving us time to bond over various commonalities. Following this event in particular I started receiving many late-night phone calls from Thomas asking us to contribute a Slaughter-Fetus track to a various artists cassette that he was planning on releasing, called the "Voyuer Compilation." Not only was their no more recordings of Slaughter-Fetus left in the vaults, the concept of the compilation deemed that our power electronics project RSP (aka Reptilian Sexual Predator) would be far better suited for the album, resulting in the RSP recording "Lucky To Be Alive." Weeks went by without hearing from our Slaughter-Fetus co-worker, resulting in a running joke between Vanessa and I that he had perhaps died in the Deep Water Horizon oil well explosion (not exactly hilarious stuff reading that back, but you would have to have been there). When Thomas got wind of the news that the other member of the band was flaking out, he asked me repeatedly if he could join and "help out," to which I responded that we would be into the idea of the band expanding as a collaborative effort between him and Leeann, whom both Vanessa and I had immense respect for as an artist and person (and of course, we still do!). After a strange all-night recording session in the eerie woods of Natchez, Mississippi, the group played a show in Houston, Texas at the first Eyes Behind The Wall festival. This performance was typified by complete insanity and disregard for civility within the confines of not hurting any of the other people present at the event. Although I am not 100% certain what all was destroyed during the set, the aftermath of the performance found the members of the band sweeping up large piles of debris.
It was at this event that the beginning stages of tour were discussed. Slaughter-Fetus was invited to tour with Ascites (Dallas, Texas) and Black Leather Jesus (Houston) through the midwestern and northeastern United States, and each band was given the responsibility of booking several of the cities that had been decided upon by all involved (in total, nine people at this juncture... there was talk of other members of Black Leather Jesus joining along, but essentially the only fixed BLJ lineup was essentially Richard and Sean). For my part, I was asked to book one date of tour (the second New York City stop of the tour), which ended up being my personal favorite night of the entire trip. So, almost six months later, damn thing ended up working pretty much according to plan. For his part, Nathan from Ascites and his wife Randa (as well as former band member Alex) went above and beyond the call of duty by scouting out and renting a vehicle large enough for such a big group of people, which now included all the people from before, as well as the Swedish harsh noise wall artist known as Skonhet. Nathan put an enormous amount of effort in particular into the entire endeavor, and he was a great and resourceful road partner. Having spent time in the Army and touring in the past, Nate really knew how to handle a tough situation with calmness, integrity, and agile problem-solving ability.
Here is where we all decided to go (and who would have us over, for that matter):

JUNE 02, 2011 DALLAS, TEXAS at the Phoenix Project. Nick from Ascites worked here as well as some of the other show attendees... this one was booked by Ascites.
JUNE 03, 2011 ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI at Camp Concentration beneath Apop Records. Great record store, owned by Dustin from Eugenics Council.
JUNE 04, 2011 MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA at a warehouse show put together by Sam and Joe from the labels Phage and Small Doses, respectively.
JUNE 05, 2011 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS at Treasure Town, a warehouse/art space show booked for us by Mack and a guy from Winters In Osaka (Adam?).
JUNE 06, 2011 COLUMBUS, OHIO at a bar called Bourbon Street- this one was put together by the inimitable Aaron Vilk of Nyodene D.
JUNE 07, 2011 (DAY OF REST)
JUNE 08, 2011 PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA at an art space booked by Edgar Um (Telecorps and Macronympha), who also had a synth-pop show going on later that evening.
JUNE 09, 2011 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS was at a venue called Starlab and booked by Egan Budd of Xiphoid Dimentia through Thomas Mortigan.
JUNE 10, 2011 BROOKLYN, NEW YORK at the Silent Barn, at a show put together by Bob Bellerue.
JUNE 11, 2011 FAR ROCKAWAY, NEW YORK capped off the tour with great assistance from the gang at the Red Light District.

{DAY ONE: MAY 31, 2011 in Hammond, Louisiana: Present- Joseph, Vanessa, Leeann, and Thomas = Slaughter-Fetus.}

Thomas and Leeann show up to the house eventually at some point in the evening. Although we had intended to have some form of practice, what ended up happening was a basic run-through of our backing tapes for the tour, and then some partying until the achievement of sleep. Before this, it was a day spent dubbing tapes by hand for Vanessa and I, as well as checking all of our sale stock for tour to make sure all of the tapes sound right etc. Vanessa created her first batch of Psychic Tapes before tour, and we had a very large Human Ignorance batch that we had put together in preparation for tour as well. All of this was being assembled even toward the last minute, and the rest of the group was showing up in the midst of a flurry of fierce listening sessions and paper scraps covering the floor from the edges of j-card sheets. A deep-rooted concern for the financial stability of the tour, and a concern for the safety of our cat overrode all other emotion on this day for me personally.

{DAY TWO: JUNE 01, 2011 in Spring, Texas: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Richard Ramirez and Sean Matzus = Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus.}

In the first leg of the journey, Thomas drove us Slaughter-Fetus persons to Spring, Texas, to the home of our Black Leather Jesus bandmates Sean Matzus and Richard Ramirez. No show or anything like that happening on this day, but it was nice to have a day to collect our resources and prepare for the coming weeks of intense driving and live performance. I believe a recording happened on this night with members of Black Leather Jesus + Slaughter-Fetus as well as Zack Guttowsky and Chanel Garcia, who live nearby and also were performing at the time with a group called Protists Of Nebula. Vanessa, Leeann, and I watched the Lars Von Trier movie "Antichrist" for the first time, which was pretty impressive. In just a month or so later, Vanessa and I would be in Brussels seeing a poster for Von Trier's next film, starring Kirstin Dunst. Von Trier had gotten into some considerable drama with many in Europe (in particular the organizers at the Cannes film festival) over some statements that he made about Hitler. It's good to live in the USA. I think the scene where Charlotte Gainsbourg performs a circumcision on herself really disturbed Vanessa and Leeann, but we all agreed it was a good film after watching it.

{DAY THREE: JUNE 02, 2011 in Dallas, Texas: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Nick Cabrera + Nathan and Randa Golub = Ascites.}

Met up with the Dallas crew and played a show at the Phoenix Project with most of the touring folks intact (minus Karl, who was unfortunately held up in Sweden by a volcano). Habeeb played this show, a side project of Larry Kerr from the harsh industrial noise duo Steel Hook Prosthesis. His performance was a set of intense mixing board abuse with noise coming from a single source for the most part, and his set kicked off the actual tour in a loud and noisy way. Abrasive and punishing stuff... also Larry provided the PA for the gig so that was really significant obviously, although acoustic sets from the various artists involved would have been interesting to see as well. Ascites played next, bringing a brief but explosive trip through extreme harsh metallics and schizophrenically hyperactive synths. Ascites is a three-piece noise group composed of Nathan Golub, a surgical assistant by trade who utilizes many medical themes in his noise work, Randa Golub, a feisty Texas hairdresser with a taste for harsh junk metal noise, and Nick Cabrera, a jazz and Motown enthusiast who works at the Phoenix Project and provides an abrasive and super-present high end of synthesizer mania to the Ascites sound. It was time for the second-ever Slaughter-Fetus gig, and it was really weird as usual. Our performance at the Eyes Behind The Wall festival ensured that there was a slight expectation (among ourselves mostly) to actually physically destroy objects within the various venues (such as vacuum cleaners, piles of bricks, and other such detritus). This show solidified that, and all of our non-acoustic sounds were going through some weird delay effect on this effects rack that I ditched after this performance, literally leaving in the back of Thomas' car instead of loading it up into the tour van with the rest of the gear. I guess I didn't like the way that it sounded! Black Leather Jesus tonight was a quartet of Richard, Sean, Vanessa, and Leeann. Richard is a long-haired, friendly self-described 'queen' with a penchant for horror films, fashion, and noise (as well as 70s and 80s sitcoms from a female perspective like "Designing Women"). Sean is an intellectual and hard-working fellow that is as kind and sensitive as he is intuitively focused in his musical work. Leeann is probably one of Vanessa and I's favorite "noise" artists, an incredibly creative and imaginative, beautiful mind. It was really nice to be able to sit back and listen to my wife and my friends perform together, an intense and buzzing electronic wall noise set that capped off the evening very nicely.

{DAY FOUR: JUNE 03, 2011 in St. Louis, Missouri: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites.}

The first drive of the day went fairly well, but seemed to last for an eternity. I remember buying a pack of cigarette from an Indian casino, and everyone being excited about some kind of "glass house" that turned out to just be a giant McDonalds. The Indian casino was interesting: thousands of years ago we made weapons out of the bones of our enemies, now we take all of their money at the casino I guess. Not that I personally get anything from it, but the tribe (the Kanza, of which I am a member) that my dad's family comes from does have an active casino apparently. I get a tribal newsletter that has color pictures of it. This day has the distinction of being the first for me that the Erasure song "Always" began to get stuck in my head, despite not having heard it for weeks. In St. Louis, we were greeted by some friends of Nathan's who treated us with real warmth and hospitality. Still no sign of Karl (Skonhet) but apparently he is meeting up with us tomorrow in Minneapolis. We ended up arriving late to the venue due to running into some kind of weird police roadblock and then having to re-route. The venue was a dungeon basement beneath an amazing record store with a wide variety of counter-cultural artifacts in the form of records, tapes, cds, dvds, and book. Very much like a d.i.y., transgressive version of a Virgin Megastore type of establishment, run by Dustin from Eugenics Council. The basement was decked out with minimal lighting and fully air-conditioned, which was definitely appreciated by the whole van crew during the loading process. Pleased also to see a cool old-school xerox flyer with collage of a cityscape and some fetuses, very nice. Oblive played, a local Missouri harsh noise wall guy, and I really enjoyed his set. The "harsh noise wall" genre of noise developed over the past 15-20 years (possibly longer if you count the prehistory of the "genre" of noise, there is some futurist and early electronic stuff even that resembles Harsh Noise Wall sonically...) as a way to describe a segment of people within the 'noise' genre who were exploring specific, repeating textures in their sound that intentionally does not deviate from a personal, textural sonic meditation. Oblive was one of the guys who was at the initial Eyes Behind The Wall festival, and it was great to see him and hear his work again. It sounded like about ten minutes of some mind-crunching other dimension coming through into the venue. Ascites was great tonight as well, completely unhinged and loud-as-possible in the tradition of full-force great noise similar to that made by the Incapacitants. An appreciation for the Japanese noise duo the Incapacitants definitely was a unifying theme among the members of BLJ, S-F, and Ascites alike. Slaughter-Fetus played another completely ridiculous set where I screamed so loudly during the middle part that I blew my voice out for the next few days. I think I yelled something like "Face front soldier! Do you think you're going to live forever?!?" while my bandmates pummeled the audience and floor of the venue, both literally and figuratively. This was a really fun set, and when I think of it I remember broken glass flying around and looking up to see Thomas just colliding with people, wearing his hoodie that said "power electronics." Randa and I performed together in Black Leather Jesus, which was a nice set filled with the acoustic clanging of Thomas' large RU-486 chain against the Slaughter-Fetus cymbal, as well as the shaking and banging of Randa's Ascites "springtar." The springtar is a long piece of metal that resembles a cafeteria light fixture with several springs attached to it that are amplified as they collide against the metal, creating a chaotic and unpredictably brutal sound. Hard to imagine that she almost left it on the curb after the show in Far Rockaway! Nathan's friends let us all stay at their place, which was a nice respite from being in the van. His old army buddy John turned out to be a great photographer, who had taken some amazing pictures from the show, as well as a bunch of really nice prints that he had put together himself. I would love to see some of his work again, it was really great stuff.

{DAY FIVE: JUNE 04, 2011 in Minneapolis, Minnesota: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites, Karl = Skonhet.}

Playing in Minneapolis was a unique experience. For me personally, this was likely one of the most grueling drives of the trip, mostly due to the fact that I had stayed up with Nathan and Thomas until around sun-up conversing in a stairwell. I remember going inside laying down and closing my eyes, followed by Thomas waking me up and telling me that he had loaded up the van and it was time to start driving to Minneapolis. When I began the drive north from Missouri, everyone except for Sean was asleep in the van while I traversed through various country roads. I was so incredibly tired, and the interstate that we were on had the maddening characteristic of changing speeds constantly, switching randomly anywhere between 25 and 55 miles per hour at any given section. This was threatening to cause me to fall asleep while driving, so this day commenced with an insane amount of coffee. We can thank this incredible bean drink for keeping us all alive probably at many points in the trip, but this was definitely a case of fighting against nature. By the time that everyone started to wake up hours later, I was subjected to hours and hours of harsh noise, including our sets from the night before, by the people in the van. This is ok, and obviously I am very personally connected with "noise music" etc, but frankly the combination of no sleep and a twelve hour drive is not congruent with also listening to hours of formless noise. I had made some feeble attempts to choose music to listen to from people's available ipods, but I was strongly discouraged from being allowed to choose the music that we all listened to. Oh, how I would have loved to listen to an ABBA singles collection at this point in time but it was simply not to be. Instead most of the tour listening material consisted of hours of formless harsh noise accompanied by the creepy voice of Diamanda Galas type of artsy/screeching voice type of stuff. Weird recordings of people making funny throat noises and breaking glass, that kind of thing.
When we showed up to Minneapolis (with plenty of time to spare), I was almost completely delirious, simply desiring only to get out of the van and walk as far as possible away from it. We were greeted upon arrival by Sam from Phage Tapes, G.X. from the Haters, and (finally!) our touring partner Karl (aka Skonhet). It was great to see all of them, but especially Karl whom I consider a friend and who lives so far away from us all. He is a very reserved but warm and highly intelligent Swedish guy who listens much more than he speaks. It was great to be able to see his project Skonhet live so many nights in a row. I was really pleased that he had made it to the show and was very happy to be able to catch up with him a bit on the way up to a local pub for some food. It was nice to speak with G.X. again as well, whom I had met before in Houston during the 2010 Dead Audio Festival. Very interesting guy with a lot of great ideas. I was experiencing some kind of "second wind" of delirium at this point... Slaughter-Fetus played not too long after a female-fronted black metal band called False. The venue reminded me a whole lot of one that The Faeries had played at in the same city around 2003, lots of bicycles laying around and everything made out of wood. Kind of like being in someone's garage/communal living space. I remember almost knocking over a PA head during the set, and after the performance having some sort of crying jag while wrapping up my cords where I was telling Randa how much I loved everybody so much. This event was organized with a bunch of noise artists and some heavy metal groups, and there was a diverse crowd. A consequence of this seemed to be that there were a bunch of people at the show who were not necessarily interested in catching the touring noise acts for the most part. I think it was still daylight outside when we had played, so it was a very long night. I remember wandering into the packed backyard after a few of the other acts had played, looking out over at the impressive Minneapolis skyline at night. It was a beautiful evening, and eventually The Haters played a killer set way late into the night. Luke and Nate, two midwestern noise brothers, performed a memorable set earlier in the night as a project called Orgasmic Response Unit. It was simply the sound of the two of them scraping metal against an amplified chicken coop, with no effects or distortion. I was extremely exhausted and went to sleep finally in the van after going temporarily insane searching the venue for a lost telephone. Apparently Richard asked me if I was ok when he got in the van, and I replied "I don't even know what that is." Nice. Karl got to hang out in the van and watch several people's emotions came to a head, involving some yelling and what-have-you. This was easily the most depressing night of the tour, personally I walked away from the uncaring crowd in Minneapolis feeling drained and soulless. There was an excessive amount of bitching and complaining over what amounts to lifestyle differences/judgments between various people within the van. I remember waking up somewhere before dawn the next day (it was still dark outside) in the parked van, and looking out the window to see people from the van having some kind of a completely unnecessary heated argument with one another, and wondering if we were going to finish the rest of the tour as planned. I have no problem with the way that anyone chooses to live their life, but once people start nit-picking and coming up with reasons to judge each other things just go nowhere. Where's the love? I felt bad that Karl had just showed up and had to hear a bunch of people throwing around a bunch of emotional baggage at one another. It was an embarrassing, stupid experience, disillusioning to say the least in terms of any facade of comeraderie being maintained for the rest of the trip. From this point on in the journey, there would be a sharp division and distance between many people in that van which was not to be mended fully on this trip. A divisive night, and the rest of the tour was to be colored by it.

{DAY SIX: JUNE 05, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites, and Skonhet.}

We ended up in Wisconsin staying with some of Randa's family, managing to get a few hours of sleep sometime the next afternoon. So far from home, and in the van with all of these people to tour and make this noise music... The previous evenings outbursts and dramas definitely colored the reserved and sort of depressed mood of the day. Ultimately I think after this point we were all (most of us) super-determined to keep this thing on the road and make sure that everything went somewhat according to plan. "The show must go on," as they say, and we definitely were all putting on quite a show wherever we went. There were many, many bathroom/food stops on this tour, and several of them I was surprised that we did not incur more friction from the locals. We were certainly getting our fair share of strange looks from people. I can distinctly recall walking into a gas station and hearing Leeann loudly proclaim "I have to take a crap" in front of a bunch of amused locals. Leeann is a tall, slender model-like figure of grace and fragility with the mouth of a sailor... I cannot imagine people reacting as positively to this outburst if it would have emitted from someone else in our caravan. Still, we got plenty of weird looks from people as our motley crew of noise marauders made our way through America's heartland. After getting a little bit of sleep in the living room (I went to sleep and the sun was up, I woke up and the sun was up), we bid a farewell to Randa's very kind family. I was impressed to see that they had up a large picture of her rocking out with the springtar in one of their bathrooms. Very cool!

THE PERPETUAL AND SELF-REPRODUCING NATURE OF TROUBLE.

After all of the previous turmoil, the drive down to Chicago was downright placid. I remember sitting in the van outside of the hotel that Richard and Sean had gotten for the night waiting for everyone to load up. No talking, just relaxing and listening to Vomir with Karl while other folks were inside, very chill. Nice HNW moment of peace and calm, thanks Romain! Several Chicago drivers attempted to collide with us on the trip to the venue, as is apparently their way. The venue itself, a place called Treasure Town, was ironically located in a part of town where any openly displayed treasure would likely be immediately seized by local inhabitants. Apparently one of the guys who was at our show was severely beaten outside the venue for not giving someone a cigarette. According to people who knew him before this incident, he looked completely different due to facial reconstructive surgery. Terrible stuff. In fact, while loading in, someone holding a half-eaten hamburger asked me for a cigarette, which I luckily had from visiting that Indian Casino. After I gave him the cigarette, he informed me to be "real" careful around here. To be perfectly honest, this place seriously gave me the creeps.
At this point in the trip, trouble was a perpetually self-reproducing journeyman with us. Trouble perhaps had a seat set aside right from the beginning, but by the end of our trip Trouble was taking turns staying with us in the air vents, in the windows, all throughout our luggage, and trying desperately to get in the driver's seat. Trouble was the name of the game. Trouble is also a doom metal band from Chicago, Illinois, the city that we were playing in tonight. However, they would not be performing on the bill tonight.
The first act of this stop was a two-man power electronics thing where a guy was swinging a chain around. Our friend Mack, who put on the show with a guy named Adam from something called Winters In Osaka, played next with his excellent ambient/musique concret project Crown Of Cerberus. Lovely and atmospheric stuff, it was a breath of fresh air to see Mack perform again. He's a great guy, and a talented, conscientious composer of electronic sounds. Slaughter-Fetus wasn't really on point tonight, we had a bad cord (which was later identified in Brooklyn) that cut our sound down to about 1/8th of the proper volume. As I turned it up things seemed to actually get quieter. Bad juju I guess, but it's not really any more fun to play a disappointing set than it is to watch one. I was totally sober for this one unfortunately because of being freaked out by the location and wanting to have my head about me for unloading. I think all the negative karma up to this point was swinging back on us after a couple of pretty good sets. Skonhet was incredibly heavy tonight and his intro was perfect. It's interesting because Karl really seeks to have a "same" sound run through his entire set, and the nature of dynamics within noise is that the venue and PA often changed aspects of the sound during the set. It was great to hear him perform after a good nights sleep and so forth, I could enjoy it a lot more easily than in Minneapolis. Ascites totally ripped at this show, really kicking ass with a short but to the point seven or so minutes of complete thrashing noise. Vanessa and I performed in Black Leather Jesus tonight, which meant from our angle banging chains on metal and putting it through some distortion pedals. Loud and painful fun, and a good way to close out the night. We stayed with some more friends of Nathan, who made a huge breakfast for everyone after the show, amazing. Kudos to Jim Haras, who was very helpful with working the PA and a really nice Chicagoan. We left again pretty early to make our way to Ohio.

{DAY SEVEN: JUNE 06, 2011 in Columbus, Ohio: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites, and Skonhet.}

At some point on the drive up, we decided to take a shortcut through Indianapolis so that we could move forward rather than being stuck in traffic for an hour. I had never been to the city of Indianapolis before, but I would use the word "underwhelming" to describe it. I kept having to look at the map to confirm that we were really in a big city. Also, we all ate at a Subway in Gary, Indiana either today or the next day while "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga played inside the restaurant. By nightfall we had made it to Columbus, and the venue. Due to a desire to avoid controversy, the guy who had put on the show (Aaron Vilk of Nyodene D) had asked us not to display several of our items in our distro, and related controversy within the band caused us to not officially use our introductory tapes. This was a really frustrating and off show for these reasons, tension was running high within the band and I was definitely not in my element. However, we managed to play a fairly decent set of blackened wall noise with a strong junk metal base and lots of randomly interspersed female screaming from Leeann and Vanessa. They both performed really raw vocals in the forms of intense gutteral screams during many of the sets, which would sometimes surprise me or freak me out while it was going on. Nice heavy set tonight. Leeann really kicked ass on tour, she is an energetic performer who gives it her all and really focuses on pushing a full-force sound. Vanessa had a strong stage presence as well, often performing with a chain around her ankle and pointe shoes during the BLJ sets, and destroying whole vacuum cleaners and tables etc in Slaughter-Fetus. I can completely rely on her during a set in a way that I have never been able to with another performer, and every night that we performed together was special. Karl was even louder than the previous night and was a great static presence, contrasting the more active set by Ascites. They were great but, like us, very much ready for tomorrow's day of rest. Still, it was an energetic and loud experience, pushing it to the limit with crunching active sci-fi noise. I feel really lucky that I got to see the three of them perform so many times, and I would go on tour with them again in a heartbeat. Nate, Randa, and Nick are who they are and they do their thing in a way only they can do it. Show organizer Aaron Vilk played an intense set as Nyodene D, opening with some samples and then going into some thick death industrial that was quite heavy. Loud, upfront vocals and an intense stage presence made for a nice short set of heavy industrial power electronics. Some grindcore band played that made me really sleepy, but then Black Leather Jesus played a really nice set that woke me up a bit. Time to load out, and this included a gigantic set of PA speakers that Vilk had brought to the show. I remember being really impressed that Aaron had a GPS system in his car that was voiced by Snoop Dogg. We listened to Lee "Scratch" Perry music on the way back to the hotel, where Thomas and Aaron would stay up all night drinking vodka and walking along the freeway late into the morning of the next day. After another few hours of sleep it would be time to pack up and head out to Pennsylvania. Did I mention that we unloaded and reloaded the van every single time that we stopped at almost any destination (where we would be away from the vehicle for any extended time)? Well, we did.

{DAY EIGHT: JUNE 07, 2011 in Fairchance + Union City, Pennsylvania: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites, and Skonhet.}

It was here that we took a break after many long drives and strange destinations. Sean Matzus, long-time member of Black Leather Jesus and current romantic partner of Richard Ramirez, was returning to his original home-town after some time away, and the whole family got to meet not only Richard but also the rest of the hooligans onboard for the trip. The property was very impressive, featuring a large rock formation that was formed during a prehistoric time when the area was underwater, forming layers of rock sediment together beaten down by running water at some point in time. Sean's brother had a very impressive "full flame" hamburger cooking style that was truly something to behold, one of many unique grilling styles that we witnessed on tour. Special arrangements were made for food to accomodate vegetarian members of the touring groups by the Matzus family. Sean's uncle (a former rocket scientist) showed us all some really cool sound engineering techniques, and we all spent a lot of time wandering around the property. Vanessa and Leeann became enamored with a nearby creek, and Leeann took a lot of pictures around that area.
Something really weird happened during dinner. An extended family member (not a blood relative of Sean) sat down by me while Leeann and Vanessa were discussing the powerful odor generated by my feet (before I had an opportunity to shower the previous night). Admittedly, the feet were a bit strong from having driven so much the past few days previous without having a shower option. I had removed my shoe for some reason, and the man became fixated on a hole in my sock while the other three of us were talking. This seemed to be too much for him to take, and for some reason he attempted to grab my foot, which resulted in an oddly lingering brief struggle (this guy was really gripping me hard for some reason...) as I pushed him off of me, saying "you don't know who you're messing with man" to this mysterious would-be assaulter. They guy was a gruff, blue-collar very drunk guy with a mustache. The raw power of my animalistic masculinity is just too much for some people to handle in a public context or something. He then explained apologetically that he simply wanted to take a picture of my sock. The man left shortly afterwards, but all company, both family and friends, were both perplexed and amused by the scenario, and I think some people were expecting me to snap and start beating on the guy or something. It was really weird, too-much-mountain-air kind of stuff. The fact that the dude kind of reminded me of my dad made things even more uncomfortable. At some point in the evening, it was announced that they had "lit up the cross" up in the hills, and for a minute I thought I would be witness to an old fashioned Klan rally marching through town or something. It turned out to just be a giant cross lit up with electric lights for some local church. We were invited to go out and party with Sean's uncle and some others, but we were all pretty tired and opted out for the night. Later that night most of the touring people stayed in a hotel in nearby Union City, which I think was probably haunted. It was a nice break from the hectic day-to-day of constantly loading our gear in and out and hoofing it to the next show in nearby Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

{DAY NINE: JUNE 08, 2011 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites, and Skonhet.}

We had dinner again with the Matzus', who were the nicest bunch of people that we could have hoped to encounter at this haggard point of the tour. They really had made us all feel welcome, and it was a nice way to have a break in the middle of everything. The attitude improved considerably from this point on and people started to be a little warmer to one another, ready to hit the stage and bust out some noise again. We showed up in Pittsburgh a little bit early so that we could all eat at the Primanti Brothers sandwich shop. This place was really cool, and thinking about the sandwich that I ate there makes me hungry thinking about it (right now even). Primanti Brothers has a very strict rule that you must have your sandwich the way that they dress them, which involves lots of french fries and the presence of a "cole slaw" dressing that is actually much more like a nicely seasoned and prepared saeurkraut. The crispy texture of the fries and the sauerkraut-like slaw dressing together created a unique texture that was amazing when combined with a little ketchup and hot sauce. Reminded me a lot of the french fry po-boys that I used to consume on a regular basis when I lived in New Orleans, so I was all over this. It was the kind of sandwich that makes you hungry when you think about it, and then you eat something else and you're still kind of hungry just thinking about that same sandwich.

"Why can't we give love one more chance?"

Lots of nice people at the venue once we showed up, and apparently among them was Joe Roemer, formerly of the noise group Macronympha. He watched our set tonight and apparently was really complementary and cordial to Vanessa about our set and so forth, and then just split the scene. Wish I could have had a chance to talk with him, as Macronympha is definitely a big inspiration for us in the noise world... and it did mean something to me that he came out and saw the Fetus (and apparently dug the set).

Slaughter-Fetus used the following setup on tour:

Vanessa: Radio, contact microphone, tapes, chain, mixing board, amp head.
Leeann: Mic'd metal sheet, tapes, contact microphone.
Thomas: Contact mic, shaker box, tapes, metal.
Joseph: Cymbal and chain, mixing board, amp head, tapes, obnoxious sports whistle, chutzpah

Slaughter-Fetus uses primarily Peavey, Korg, and Behringer gear, as well as Hierchiss and Crank contact mics.

Ascites played a particularly active and energetic blast on this evening, and at some point I heard Nick really strong in the mix and for the first time noticed how he brought a strong free-jazz sound to Ascites. Karl played a monolithic and powerful set, seemed really pleased with it as well. I was surprised at how critical he was about his sets, and he always sounded loud and heavy. Perfection has its own path I suppose. Black Leather Jesus played a longer set than usual on this evening, and it was a great lineup that really coasted on an intense and cresting wall of sound. This gig was probably the most active performance that Richard put on for this tour, with a very dynamic arrangement of gloved metallic object manipulation pushed through a contact mic and a pedal or two. Through that simple sound he gets the tone and texture that he wants, carrying it along ever so slightly as it shifts textures/colors. Sean piles on a Moog synth and an incredible mixing board and radio setup that provides much of the visual and mixing component of the modern Black Leather Jesus sound, orchestrating all of the other members gently into the mixture and creating a wave of sound that crests and explodes throughout the sets. It was cool to sit back and watch my friends play a nice long set together, very good. After the bands were done, show promoter Edgar Um played a bunch of great dance type of music, and Vanessa and I had a blast throwing down our moves behind the merch table. Opening act RJ Myato offered us a place to stay after the gig, but the others opted to start the long way up north to Massachusetts in order to get a head start on the next day. RJ was a really nice guy though. It's a good thing that we did because it would prove to be one of the most difficult drives on the trip.

{DAY TEN: JUNE 09, 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites, and Skonhet.}

Woke up in a hotel somewhere in Northern Pennsylvania today, and it was my turn to drive again. This meant that I was to be driving straight into some sort of insane hailstorm. The last time that I had been to Boston before this, I was a roadie for the amazing all-female indie-pop trio Del Cielo (on their Martin Luther King holiday weekend tour through the northeast), not too long before their breakup. In fact, I attended their final ever show several years later after evacuating to Virginia from the events following Hurricane Katrina. On this particular three-day weekend where I was roadying, I drove through some sort of historic snowstorm (2003? 2004? Write to me with the correct answer and maybe you will get a prize). I had never before driven through snow, so it was a fairly harrowing experience. Thankfully we were availed by a New Order "Greatest Hits" cassette that weathered us through the storm at that time. However, the Black Leather Jesus touring group had no such luck in terms of a helpful pop presence from the past. We had to make do today in fact with hours of The Fall and Wire (not terrible, but still not with the healing presence of say a Madonna or The Carpenters). This last leg of our trip was sadly cursed by violent storms and traffic, culminating in a late arrival to Boston through backed-up roadways etc etc. At one point Katy Perry's "Firework" came on the radio, which was a huge highlight of the entire tour for me personally, along with the time that "E.T." by Katy Perry came on the radio. Before getting into Boston proper I found some sort of college radio station that was playing relaxing minimalist techno, which made the initial arrival into the city a bit more peaceful. Once we arrived to the venue, the van was instantly assaulted by Peter Lee and Andrew Grant of Bereft, who castigated my ability to park, and frightened some of the more sensitive people among the van hierarchy.
This one was kind of weird because Slaughter-Fetus performed all separately instead of together. Thomas had booked the show in a manner such that RU-486 and Hierchiss performed as solo artists. Vanessa and I opted to perform as part of Black Leather Jesus rather than play in a solo group formation. We were very much in a group mindset performing day-to-day in BLJ and S-F, and our solo projects are extremely personal and dependant on preparation and being "in the zone" when we perform as a duo. I would have preferred to play in Boston as Slaughter-Fetus, but it was not to be. However, that said, both Thomas and Leeann totally kicked ass with their performances. Andrew played a great set near the beginning as The Vomit Arsonist, a death-industrial hybrid of dark synthesizers and intense vocal performance. I had seen him perform really killer sets both solo and with Peter as Bereft at last year's Dead Audio Festival and was really glad to see him again. Peter from Bereft is a really cool, smart guy, I was really happy to see him again, and he did a great job as part of RU-486's backing set along with noise madman Andy Grant. Was really surprised to see Jessica Rylan at the gig- I had met her years earlier at the Whitehouse gigs mentioned in the first paragraph of this thing. She and her friend Donna Parker performed alongside Pig Destroyer at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan on that tour. She had traded me a copy of her "New Secret" CD on RRRecords that is still one of the most unique noise releases that I have ever heard. I was really nice to see her again, although I wish she could have performed on the bill as well! She is a really unique and interesting noise artist. Ascites performed a set tonight without Randa, and Vanessa stood in for their brief performance. Vanessa and I performed again in Black Leather Jesus tonight, basically each performing static wall noise simultaneously alongside Sean and Richard. Very loud and powerful set tonight, and people seemed to enjoy it despite the fact that some were puzzled by our lack of movement throughout the set. It was really loud, and I was definitely happy with it for my part. Met a really nice guy from a project called Corpuscle whom I got a demo from. Very nice dark lo-fi noise industrial music, and a really sweet guy to boot. Slaughter-Fetus, Nick, and Karl all stayed over at Egan Budd's place, the guy who put on the show. He was nice enough to set us up with some chips and salsa and tofutti ice cream sandwiches, as well as a case of beer and liquor cabinet access. He did a great job putting on the show and in general he was a gentleman and a scholar. Really mellow dude who doesn't mess around with BS and knows how to have a good time. His project Xiphoid Dementia is really interesting dark electronic stuff as well, definitely worth checking out. He asked Thomas us why all the Black Leather Jesus people (I guess including me) seemed bummed out. Speaking for myself and Vanessa, we had a great time in Boston and would play there again in a heartbeat. I think tonight was the night that I asked Karl the important question: who are bigger assholes, Americans or Finnish people? His answer was Americans. Go USA! I had a feeling that he might say that after having to put up with us all for the past couple of days. Luckily he was not particularly bothered by our shenanigans in the Slaughter-Fetus camp. Miss that guy!

{DAY ELEVEN: JUNE 10, 2011 in Brooklyn, New York: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites, and Skonhet.}

After a stop in Lowell, Massachusetts to visit Ron Lessard's RRRecords, we ended up getting stuck in traffic yet again on our way to the next show. We ended up having to get the the show late yet again, which was becoming an unfortunate tour constant at this point. It did not help that the large, field-trip like group had to make constant, eternal stops along the way at various gas stations, restaurants etc. New York, New York, the big apple. We drove into the city the back way, and on this trip Vanessa and I didn't actually see much of New York proper, but we weren't looking to do much sight-seeing on this tour. I had played gigs in Manhattan and Brooklyn before, and in fact I have a distinct memory of hitting up a Manhattan pizza place after the Faeries set on our 2004 set at the Knitting Factory and seeing the news of Marlon Brando's death on the cover of the New York Post. There was a picture of him from "The Wild Ones." Vanessa and I had come up to New York a couple years earlier and I showed her around Times Square and so forth, it's a really beautiful place. Next time we are around maybe we'll look around a bit more, but this time we were very much ready to relax with friends. Parking in Brooklyn was a joke, and Nathan had to park the vehicle in a really disreputable spot that was pretty far away from the actual venue. The venue, Silent Barn, was recently raided by police and vandalized by local hooligans, and it was/is an art space with a bunch of people living in there. Interesting spot, but seems like it's in the middle of gang territory or something.
I was really interested in catching Anthony Saunders' project on this gig, and unfortunately for me he went on first and I missed the performance. He is a killer noise artist and I hope to catch him live one day in the future! I did end up getting to talk to him though which was cool, he turned out to be a really nice guy. Jeremy and Frank from the Red Light District (tomorrow's venue) showed up not too long after we arrived. Back in February these two dear fellows played a really fun show with Vanessa and I in New Orleans with our project RSP (aka Reptilian Sexual Predator). I was really happy to see them both, and it was really great to meet Red Light District co-dweller Margaret as well. I am a fan of her project Pharmakon, but had never met her before. She turned out to be an incredibly cool and down-to-earth person. Skonhet played a great set tonight, really loud and brutal for all the wall noise lovers in attendance. This was to be the final Black Leather Jesus performance of the tour, and so we played with a gigantic lineup that consisted of Richard, Sean, Thomas, Nathan, Randa, Thomas, Leeann, Vanessa, and myself. Extremely loud and vulgar performance that was probably entertaining. At this point I was really anxious to perform a Slaughter-Fetus set again. Afterwards, we (meaning the same crew who stayed over at Egan's the previous night) drove out to Far Rockaway to rest for the evening, and those people really showed us some amazing hospitality. The Red Light District is home to an amazing basement venue where many New York experimental noise events occur, including the annual Burning Fleshtival. The house is a 70s-style wooden building that looks from outside like something someone's grandmother would live in. It is located not far from the JFK International Airport outside of NYC. The inside is decorated uniquely, and the giant backlight collages in the living room add an eerie ambience to the front area of the house. Upon arrival, we got to meet Freddy, the feline of the house, a black and white cat with a laid-back demeanor. Margaret showed Thomas and I the extrensive basement where the show would be happening the next day, and we were floored. It was a huge show space underneath the house with a wall of amps against the back line, complete with a side bar area, and a room in the back to keep all of the equipment. After making a quick beer run to a nearby quick stop (I was pleasantly surprised to find Guinness at the gas station), we ended up hanging out and talking in the living room until dawn. I think Thomas and Leeann spent a lot of time talking about the rest of the people on tour, and at some point really late into things Nick got into some crazy conversation with me about Slaughter-Fetus being Nazi sympathizers who are insensitive to the feelings of others. He was really upset at first but we kept talking and things eventually improved. Nick is a great guy, and it was hilarious and bizarre to get into a crazy debate with him at 4-5 am. I cannot even remember the full content of the discussion, except that it went on for longer than an hour somehow. It was really nice to be able to relax somewhere with people who were so hospitable and enthusiastic to have us over... they really made us feel welcome, and put on an amazing party the next day. And best of all, we didn't have to load up all our gear in the morning, as it was already at the venue!

{DAY TWELVE: JUNE 11, 2011 in Far Rockaway, New York: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape, Ascites, and Skonhet.}

"I'm a get your heart racing in my skin tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight." - Katy Perry

This was it, the last day of the tour. Vanessa and I woke up on the couch sometime in the early afternoon after a very comfortable sleep. Caitlyn and John, two other people who lived at the house, showed up on this day after a gig they had together in Connecticut the night before. Shortly before Vanessa and I left for this tour (just a few days in fact), the two of them had played a show at our house in Hammond that was a lot of fun, so we had really been looking forward to hanging out with them again. The four of us and Karl took a walk out to Rockaway Beach, the one that is discussed in the Ramones song of the same title. John and Caitlyn are both incredibly pleasant, laid back people. When they were in town at our house for their performance, it felt like we were being visited by family. John seems like he could actually be from the future, an extremely perceptive and sensitive individual. Caitlyn has these really intense eyes that pop into my mind anytime I think about her at all. She seems like a magical being. Both Vanessa and I were really happy to have some time to hang out at the beach in a relaxing atmosphere after so much drama and chatter in the tour van for the previous several weeks. There was almost no one out at the beach, and the weather was surprisingly chilly for the middle of summertime. Very nice. When we got back to the house, some friends of the RLD folks showed up, and the folks at the house began to cook out in the back. Jeremy had designed some kind of gourmet hamburgers (with garlic and onion chunks in them) for the touring people. The backyard at Red Light District is a vast space peppered with trees and shrubbery, well maintained by Jeremy. It is a truly beautiful area, and a great place to relax during the RLD events. But soon, (right around sundown actually) we are called at the last minute to pick the other four folks up... I was really worried that I would miss Margaret's set (she was playing the show in part because of my request! I could not miss it). When we showed up to pick up Richard, Sean, Nate, and Randa, they were really excited about a big Alexander McQueen fashion installation that they all saw in Manhattan, so they were all in good spirits on the way out to Far Rockaway.

"The horror of knowing what this life's all about... listening to some good friends scream "Let me out!" - Bowie and Queen

We showed back up at the house just barely in time to catch Margaret's solo set as Pharmakon. Pharmakon is a power electronics/industrial noise act that has a style and fierce personal expression that nicely completes the Red Light District atmosphere. It was amazing to be able to see her live and I'm glad we didn't miss it. Over an atmospheric, pulsating synthesizer bed, Margaret emits piercing screams that seem to come from beyond her physical form. Harsh metallic sounds and feedback noise are placed expertly throughout with an intense amount of care and control. Her set was probably about 10-15 minutes, but every minute was powerful and intense. I was really, really happy to be playing a Slaughter-Fetus set again. After two nights in a row without doing our thing, and it being my only set of the night, I was ready to completely let loose with this one. I stormed into the equipment room while two people were having some kind of emotional conversation and they asked me to "give them a minute," but I could heed no such request. I was so excited and nervous to play when I went into the equipment room that I sipped my beer from the side opposite the hole, getting beer in my eye before the show. I have heard that in some cultures this is considered good luck. It was time for Slaughter-Fetus to plug in and play!
So here we were on the last day of the tour, possibly the last time that this line-up of Slaughter-Fetus would ever perform together (after tour, Thomas and Leeann would go their seperate ways, and he will be moving away to Texas soon, so it might just be a three-piece for a while if it keeps going...). It was so dark in the main room that we were give a flashlight to see our gear with. For the previous couple of shows that we played, we had chilled out on the "breaking stuff" aspect of the Slaughter-Fetus performance out of sensitivity to the venues. However, John made it very clear that not only was it welcome at the Red Light District, but that it was in fact highly encouraged. This was all Vanessa needed to hear, and before long there was a soon-to-be obliterated vacuum cleaner by the performance area. Uh oh. Also, Vanessa had made some kind of "moon oil" with an eerie red shade to it that was sitting dangerously close to my mixer. So, the first thing that happens in our set is somebody accidentally steps on the power strip almost as soon as the intro samples are done. Hilarious, but we went right back into the beginning of the madness. The first section of the set started out kind of calm, as we were easing into what would be a longer sort of set for us, but once the air raid siren went out and I blew the whistle, all hell broke loose. At most of the Slaughter-Fetus shows on that tour, there was always a section of the set where I blew a sports whistle and an air raid siren sounded. No particular meaning to it all, just my way of being really obnoxious I suppose. This time around, I stepped away from my usual position at the mixing board in order to get on the floor and make some noise with the contact mic and the (now covered in dirt and mud) cymbal. At this show I actually ran all of our backing/intro tapes, making for a chaotic collage of pre-recorded sound while the other three generated live noise with mics and steel. It felt really good, but by the end the floor was covered in dirt from the vacuum cleaner, moon oil, and beer from all of the "dancing." I'm not exaggerating here, the floor was all nice and clean before our set and by the end, as I was making noise with the cymbal on the ground, there was a strange cake of mud everywhere. By the end of the night it had extended to the upstairs area, a bog of mud and stuff streaming through the house. After our set was done I heard Ke$ha playing really loud, and just started jumping up and down dancing like crazy with Frank and some girls. There was just an incredibly good vibe in the air that made up for the past two weeks big time... just a beautiful feeling. I remember Jeremy excitedly cleaning up the floor in a dancing gesture saying something like "It's ok man, I spilled a beer." I asked Thomas if Jeremy had spilled a beer, and then Thomas said "No, I think I spilled a beer or something. I don't know." Weird! Anyway, I think it went well and I hope that the filth was worth it, guys and gals. Wish we could have stayed an extra day to help clean up! Ascites and Skonhet both played the best sets that I have ever seen them play on this particular night. Not just because of feeling emotional having to say goodbye to those guys, they just both sounded incredible tonight through the amazing Red Light District PA. I could tell that they were having a great time, which made me feel really god because it was about damn time people were having some fun on this tour. The audience at this event was so incredibly positive and enthusiastic that it was unbelievable. People were just going completely nuts to all of this music and having a great time. It was amazing to see people having so much fun, and it was great to be a part of such a good feeling and have our little part in it. It was also great to see my friends totally kicking ass in front of such an incredibly appreciative audience. Everyone was feeling great at this point and hanging out talking with folks throughout the house. I had a really nice conversation with Richard while I was holding two beers (which must have looked funny to him), and he said that he really liked what we had done that night, which meant a lot to me. Richard and his work with Black Leather Jesus has a big inspiration to me even before I ever met the guy, and it was an honor to play in his group on this tour, but it meant even more to me that he enjoyed what Slaughter-Fetus did on that night. It was a set that was very intense and personal for me, at times during it I became completely within myself, even forgetting the presence of the audience. I guess this happened at all of the really good performances on tour, a moment where my mind steps out of time and experiences itself from outside. That is something that I used to feel onstage with the Faeries and Black Sun (my two old bands back in New Orleans...) during the best performances of those groups, and Slaughter-Fetus was the first time that I ever had that feeling again. Something about being with a group and working toward the goal, with everyone's equal part being heard, it is a powerful experience.
I think Lussuria went on next. A tall, soft-spoken and intelligent felow behind a massive table of equipment, making organic and lush ambient/experimental music that was a great respite from all of the loud stuff that we had been hearing. Lussuria's sound is completely instrumental but still lyrical in a manner, the sounds evoking emotion like sonic poetry for the imaginitive mind. His set was cinematic, naturalistic sound that worked actively within a noise context, actually not dissimilar in style to the excellent Crown Of Cerberus whom we played with in Chicago. Really great sound artist whose recordings are hard to find but most certainly worth your time to track down, lush soundscapes that are not quite like anything else that you will hear. It was really cool to get to meet him afterwards and chat briefly, apparently he really enjoyed the Thunderbolt Brigade tape that Vanessa and I released on our label. Good dude. Last Rape played and they sounded great. The whole set, they just stared at everybody disdainfully while the crowd went nuts behind the guys standing up front. Powerful vibe that was felt by the crowd, no matter how comical the concept of moshing to HNW (harsh noise wall) music maybe to some people. Rich and Sean sounded awesome during a loud and unchanging wall that lasted about ten minutes or so. I don't think they touched their gear once during the set actually. In between all of the acts, Ryan, Margaret's sister (I cannot remember her name but she was so freaking cool... great taste in music also), and some others were DJ-ing dance music constantly in between sets. John made a comment along the lines that this was one of those shows that could go on all night long, and that maybe they would have to set up kareoke or something. Ran into Nick from Cowards (who also lives at RLD) in the blacklit pool-room at one point, and he was telling me that this was the best show that they had since Peter Sotos appeared at the house. When I shared this information with Richard, he laughed and said that the people on this tour all together were bigger perverts than Peter Sotos- it really cracked me up. Sotos is a great writer and artist though, and I bet that was a really awesome event and wish that I could have caught it. FFH (aka Richard Dunn) played next, which was a personal highlight of the tour as far as my personal tastes go. I think that of all the acts that we played with on tour, I was most excited to see what live FFH was all about. There are not really any videos of FFH that exist to my knowledge, and even his releases are often difficult to find. FFH is, like Pharmakon, a solo power electronics/industrial noise project with definite songs and composition, unique and truly disturbed stuff. His set was maybe between 8-12 minutes long, a waterfall of harsh noise filled with rushing walls of thick crusty crunching blackness and harsh, sorethroat vocals. Killer way to cap of the evening, and a rare performance from an incredible New York industrial/power electronics artist. Rich Dunn was a really cool guy, and while talking to him I met the lovely NY noise performer C. Lavender, whose tape "Meet Me At The Station" I have been enjoying a lot lately. As John predicted, the evening did indeed go on for much longer into the night, but with kareoke forgone in favor of an all night dance party. I remember hearing the following songs: "Enjoy The Silence", "Far Too Frail", "Du Hast", "The Macarena", and many others. Ryan Woodhall's violent shirtless dancing in the darkened basement reminded me of his performance as one half of the Halflings several years previous in New Orleans. He is a really funny guy, but his project Hands Rendered Useless is a disarmingly serious and intense psycho-sonic ambient project. The recent release "Mists Of Lace" from HRU sounds like recordings of ghosts played alongside the ambient soundtrack to some ultra-disturbing lost art film. Together with Frank and Jeremy, he performs in the excellent urine-themed musique concret/industrial performance art project Yellow Tears. By the coming of early morning, the basement party had let up and Vanessa and I sat on the couch, while I rambled on with a bunch of half-awake, partially baked nonsense to Caitlyn and John, who were still up and hanging out with Vanessa and I in the living room. I was so sleepy at this point but did not want to stop hanging out. People went out to White Castle and picked up for us a giant milkshake, which we shared with our friends until early morning sunrise. It was a huge milkshake, I remember having to hold it with two hands and there being a gigantic straw for it. I remember through the entire duration of this time Thomas was talking Richard Dunn's ear off in the pool room... I thought out loud something along the lines of "What the hell has he been going on about this whole time?" Slaughter-Fetus were all pretty delirious at this point, I think. A few hours of sleep later, it would be time to load the van back up for the trip home. Sad to be leaving behind this great night and all of these really nice people... we wished that it could have gone on for much longer, but there is only so much time in the day.

{DAY THIRTEEN: JUNE 12, 2011 from New York to Tennessee: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, Ascites and Skonhet.}

Ouch. After collecting the remnants of what was left behind from our souls following such an explosive finale to tour, it was time to head back home to our mundane and uneventful, non-noise touring lives. And what was to become of Slaughter-Fetus? Facing work, school, and general financial woes the four companions calling themselves Slaughter-Fetus would never again perform their particular brand of noise music in the four-piece line-up seen on tour. To you in Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Far Rockaway who saw us do our thing, you witnessed a little noise moment in time that will never return in terms of that period of Slaughter-Fetus, and perhaps the world is better for this. A sad farewell to Karl, who is boarding a plane back to Sweden from New York. He had a couple days after the event to hang out in New York, which is cool. We had really good times on the trip and it was a bummer to have to say goodbye. The car conversation is silent for much of the way home, except for people occasionally vocalizing a need. Nathan made amazing time heading back on this day. We arrive somewhere in Tennessee very late the next morning at the home of Nathan's family, and tomorrow would be the home stretch for the Dallas crew. I was looking forward to going home as well but it would still be a few days for the rest of us. I remember, after being asked if he had a good night's sleep, hearing Sean say the next morning that it was "one of those things" where you close your eyes to go to sleep and them you open them and it is time to wake up. That pretty much sums it up for the road crew at this point- doing what needs to be done to get back home. Sad, long day of driving, but at least everyone was "pretty much" getting along with each other. I just couldn't wait to get home and listen to some Katy Perry with our cat.

{DAY FOURTEEN: JUNE 13, 2011 from Tennessee to Texas: Present- Slaughter-Fetus, Last Rape/Black Leather Jesus, and Ascites.}

Woke up at Nathan's sister's house. She was so nice- Nathan's family and friends really helped us all out a lot on this tour, really made things nice. Another long day of driving, involving a stop at a disreputable barbecue restaraunt and some very long drives. I think that this was the day that "E.T." by Katy Perry came on the radio, a major tour highlight for me personally. Everyone is a bit more talkative today, happy to be on the way back home and back into each of our individual comfort zones. We showed up in Dallas shortly before midnight, which signalled my birthday (June 14th, flag day). I was driving most of the day and we listened to a lot of radio music, nice and relaxing. When we got back to Dallas to Nick's house, took us Slaughter-Fetus folks out to a bar in Dallas to celebrate, and we had a lot of fun just hanging out and partying lightly. It was really nice to be with friends just relaxing on this day... even being so far away from home, still I felt very comfortable. Also, I finally got to listen to "California Girls" by Katy Perry. We organized what was left of our merchandise (not much to speak of actually, in fact as I write this we are sold out of almost all of our material that we have ever released) and went through all of the various cassettes from people that we picked up along the way. I think I consolidated everything to where there was a few empty boxes left over, a nice feeling considering the fact that we had left with so much material to sell. It was a nice feeling that people actually wanted to buy the stuff, and we were really reliant on this tour on merchendise sales for our food etc money. Fell asleep hearing Leeann listen to "The End" by The Doors on Nick's computer, which was pretty tripped out and kind of disturbing. I slept in the next day and didn't say goodbye to the others that weren't over at Nick's... I really don't like saying goodbye, and I'll see them all again. I needed the sleep at this point. Not happy, not sad, just ready to let go and figure out how to adjust back into the day-to-day existence in Louisiana.

{DAY FIFTEEN: JUNE 14, 2011 from Dallas, Texas back home to Hammond, Louisiana: Present- Slaughter-Fetus + Nick from Ascites.}

We bid an early farewell to Nick. It was time to head East for the members of Slaughter-Fetus. The gals were asleep through much of this trip as Thomas and I stayed up and shared a lot of tense dude conversation, mostly involving the way that tour went down. At one point, somewhere between Alexandria and Shreveport, we had to change out a tire on the side of a busy interstate while 18-wheeler trucks zoomed by. After that, we listened to the Tension Fields and Teeny Bopper tapes that I had with me on the way back home. We ended up taking a lot of side roads because of the fact that we were riding on a spare tire, and Thomas + Leeann still had to get back home to Mississippi after leaving our house. This was another long drive that took all day (Dallas to Hammond through Baton Rouge), and it was night time again before we got back home. Went and picked up a pizza and some beer with Thomas when we got back home, and it was nice to just drive my own vehicle and listen to the music that I wanted to while hanging out with my pal. Driving down 190 and blaring Landser with the windows down through Hammond was a relaxing capper to things. That night we watched some movies and hung out with our cat Dave, chilling out at home with some pizza. For me personally, it was a really nice birthday gift to be reunited with Vanessa and I's little house and our beloved feline companion. Thomas and Leeann left out early the next morning for Mississippi, and I'm sure that they were glad to be home as well. It was a great experience for us in Slaughter-Fetus, and we are really grateful to everyone on tour and in the van for helping us have the ability to play these shows and do what we love. It was really incredible being able to play so many venues and meet so many cool people. Vanessa and I definitely look forward to doing it again in some form or another. The experience of being in close quarters with so many different kinds of people was fairly intense, and I'm sure half of the people on tour will never do anything quite like it ever again. I remember after going out to Houston and playing the first Slaughter-Fetus show (with the original line-up featuring that original S-F guy), just feeling completely worthless and not happy whatsoever with what had been accomplished. After the tour with this line-up, and all of these different people whose music I also enjoy and admire, I was battle-scarred and triumphant. It was an extremely difficult journey that changed everybody involved in one way or another. I can honestly say that I feel love and respect for all of the people that were in that van, despite any differences or difficulty that may have arisen. I hope that all of the people who were there for the shows got something out of it, because we all certainly did.

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OH HAI - You are currently enjoying issue number four of my online zine MY GOAT. My name is Joseph Gates, and I have been writing for a long time and not really collected much of it in one spot. This issue finds us coming out of a two part "True Crime" edition of MY GOAT, and further issues in the forseeable future will continue the structure of opening with some true crime-related material and then expanding into the other columns WALL MANIACS and UNLISTENABLE MUSIC. WALL MANIACS will continue to focus on my life and events that occur within it, UNLISTENABLE MUSIC seems to serve as some sort of outlet for fiction writing, and the ongoing film column VIOLENT VISIONS appears this time in the form of a capsule review omnibus of my favorite slasher, comedy, and family films.
Also, do you work for the CIA, Mossad, or any other organization looking to fulfill a well-paid position for an original content provider? Highly motivated writer, available for work, competitive rates. If you are interested in providing paid work for such a person, contact me, Joseph Gates, at harshhumanignorance@gmail.com . I am a well-read and impartial abeiter of history.

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CAT, FROG, and LIZARD UPDATE - In cat news, Dave is doing great. She is much bigger than last year and seems to be really flourishing in her role as cat diplomat. A small furry brown and white kitten has been spotted nearby, and Dave seems to be attempting to initiate talks with the young cat. Runaway former across-the-street Saffron, a large solid-grey male, has become an ogre-like presence under the house, and unfortunately will come out to eat food left outside for the small kitty. This is unfortunate, due to the young cat's desire for food and Saffron's unfortunately grotesque stature. It seems that the larger cat has been well-fed by someone or other in the community, and what was once a handsome and friendly cat has become a wild and feral, grotesquely obese enemy of the state. Twice the night before last Saffron was heard attempting to assault the kitten ("Cinnamon" Elvis), bellowing disturbing cougar-like howls of anger and despair. Tonight, "Cinnamon" Elvis ate a full dish of tasty dry cat food while yours truly stood watch to make sure that the cruel, overfed Saffron did not once again keep "Cinnamon" Elvis from his/her dinner. Sadly, little "Cinnamon" Elvis is very skittish and untrusting (often running away after eating just a little bit of food), but has appeared at our house for the past several nights, including spending almost all of Monday evening in the tree in front of our house. Saffron attempted to chase the smaller cat up a tree, but was so fat that he fell backwards onto the ground while attempting to climb up. "Cinnamon" Elvis' little smiling face was sublime as he sat up in the tree in victory, a huge smile on his face. Hopefully he will begin to feel more and more comfortable despite the presence of the hulking grey monster under the house... wish there was some way to resolve the situation. Damn you Saffron! Dave is responding to all of this by being ultra-cute and spending what seemed like an eternity kneading my stomach with her paws before going to sleep last night. She has taken to wearing a small pink scarf that Vanessa made her out of fabric that she is using to build some sort of Kimono. Haven't seen little "C" E in a day or so now, hope he's ok. Getting kind of cold outside. Been putting out food though, and it keeps vanishing, so hopefully that little kitty is doing ok... I think Saffron is afraid to come up on our steps where I keep "C" E's food, and he's fat enough already.
In lizard and frog news, I found a small lizard in the bathroom that was bright green and extremely friendly. I had a hard time getting him to climb on to my hand initially, but once he was on there he didn't want to get off of me when I tried to put him outside. He was quite a hopper though, and made his way into the grass and out to freedom. Hopefully he won't be killed by one of those cats! Almost stepped on a toad later that afternoon, but luckily the guy was ok. I reached down to make sure that he was alright after seeing him right under my foot, but he was fully intact and doing fine. When I began to pet him, his whole toady body leaned on my index finger as if to say, "It's alright, friend" before he hopped along on his merry way.

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VIOLENT VISIONS
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Capsule Review Edition: (Featuring short reviews of 33 horror movies, family films, or comedies... I had promised 50 of these at some point, but the other 17 capsule reviews will appear in the next issue.)

AQUAMARINE - Wow, this one is really amazing. Probably the most realistic mermaid movie that I have ever seen (and that is including the gruesome and horrifying "Mermaid In A Manhole"). Starring Jojo and Emma Roberts as two girls whose friendship is threatened by the tomboyish Jojo character moving away from their lovely beach locale. A mermaid (the beautiful, Goddess-like Sara Paxton) manifests in their reality after the girls ritualistically ask the Gods for assistance during a sleepover (resulting in a violent windstorm). Paxton's mermaid character ominously materializes in a nearby swimming pool, arriving to both deepen their friendship and to act out the rising sexual/romantic desires that they have for a local lifegaurd. Sara Paxton's performance as a mermaid trying to fit in to human society is magnificent and unforgettable, and the film is made with great care and creativity despite some questionable musical choices placed throughout. Overall, the sentiment is sweet and fluffy. Cute movie.

LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET - Roger Watkins produced, wrote, directed, organized the soundtrack to, and starred in this bizarre proto-slasher, psychosexual masterpiece that was filmed in the early 1970's and edited in the later part of that decade, before Watkins embarked upon an infamous career in pornography directing under various pseudonyms. Watkins intended for this film to be a three hour story, told in consecutive order with no flashbacks, of a man who makes dirty films taking revenge on business associates who betrayed him after a stint in jail. The severely edited and surreally dubbed result places many scenes in new order, and includes sections from the gory grand guignal finale edited teasingly into the opening minutes of the film. The result (which was dubbed for audio in the studio of Francis Ford Coppola by Watkins after the film itself was severely edited by his distributors) is a hypnotizing and ritualistic pean to chaos, murder, and revenge. Watkins portrays a Satan-like film director who is fueled by speed, a drive for sex, and a bizarre appetite for non-sequitir sadism inflicted upon all those who encounter him in the film (aside from his close cronies, the cult-like gang bond seems to bw an echo of the opening sections of "A Clockwork Orange"... in fact the original title for the film was "The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell" from a Kurt Vonnegut novel...). This film includes unflinching scenes of old-school gore, including a surgery table scene that resembles early Hermann Nitsch exhibitions of the time, along with a woman in blackface being whipped by a hunchback. An authentically deranged document.

EXORCIST 3 - After turns from William Friedkin and John Boorman, original scriptwriter William Peter Blatty returned to the director's chair (after his auteurial debut with "The Ninth Configuration") for a sequel that both expanded the original universe of and breathed new life into the franchise (which has continued to flourish with sequels and knock-offs into the current 2000 era). Starting out as an adaptation of his novel "Legion," Blatty's original vision was compromised by a studio that demanded a supernatural ending with an actual exorcism, resulting in the inclusion of a priest character not in the novel or the original draft of the screenplay. The result of this tinkering was an explosive special-effects laden finale that was adverse to the starkly realistic and morose tone of the rest of the film. The film is an extremely depressive exploration of evil, in which a serial killer aided by demonic forces just outside of human reality works to taunt and confuse a police detective (played by George C. Scott). The murders are not generally depicted graphically onscreen, but instead are described through dialogue in a manner that is incredibly unsettling. The description of the deaths, and the way that the bodies are handled by the murderer, cuts to the root of the basic fear of mortality. Blatty depicts a villian who lives outside of the rules of morality and uses random people's bodies as a canvas with which to prove the unjust nature of life on our planet to us feeble peons. In many ways, the all-powerful killer, as well as the depiction of supernatural forces guiding the world of serial murder, mirrors similar themes in Twin Peaks and Silence Of The Lambs, which were both from the same year. The result is one of the most surreal and horrifying horror films ever made, a truly unsettling and authetic film despite the forced and incongruous ending. Witness the bizarre chatty banter of the first section of the film, followed by the abrupt change in mood after the third murder in the film to see an expertly arranged study in psychological discomfort. This film would become a favorite of serial murderer Jeffery Dahmer, who would, according to one attempted victim, begin to chant demonic incantations out loud while watching it. Interestingly, the yellow contacts worn during the exorcism finale (along with those worn by the actor who plays the Emperor in "Return Of The Jedi") influenced Dahmer to wear a similar pair of colored contact lenses out in public when he was cruising for potential victims in bars. A stark and chilling authentic depiction of evil looking at mankind... worth a look for fans of authentic scares.

LIFEFORCE - Powerful and well-made but little-seen science fiction epic wrangled and squeezed from Colin Wilson's epic novel "The Space Vampires," adapted by Tobe Hooper and Dan O'Bannon (among others). Mathilda May sets the screen on fire with her completely nude appeance throughout the duration of the film. The movie avoids much of the sub-plots and complex histories of the novel and focuses instead on a melodramatic, awesomely and comically overrwrought romance between an astronaut played by Steve Railsback and May's character. Mathilda May plays a space alien who's true appearance is that of a frightening gargoyle-like creature, but it takes on the appearance of a naked and beautiful human in order to seduce the astronaut. In one form, she has a lovers argument with him from the body of Star Trek: The Next Generation's Patrick Stewart! That's right, this movie has a scene with Patrick Stewart and Steve Railsback making out while crazy, "Poltergeist"-like special effects send objects flying around the room. The world-eating succubus follows him to Earth, which basically results in a psychic invasion of nymphomaniacal interdimensional vampires that multiply and reproduce like a cancer. Steve Railsback, a true romantic, leaves his home planet behind the the pursuit of intergalactic love while Earth is overrun by the titular space vampires of Wilson's original novel. Very likely, this is some sort of a masterpiece.

LOST HIGHWAY - Confusing post-Twin Peaks noir effort from the notoriously obtuse surreal American filmmaker David Lynch. Inspired by the O.J. Simpson trial and Simpson's claims of innocence, the first section of the film imagines a scenario where a man seems to be framed for murder (apparently by a conspiratorial cabal of porn filmmakers similar to those depicted in Dan Clowes graphic novel "Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron"). After going to jail, he wakes up in his cell after (a particularly painful and montaged night) as a completely different actor and character, one who is much younger and not guilty of murder. The young man strikes up an affair with the girlfriend of a mafioso-like individual, and the woman looks exactly like the murdered wife from the first part of the film. The younger man is similarly haunted/trailed by these demonic forces, and in the end it all fades away into the darkness and headlights speeding across an uncertain highway. Although Lynch has stated that the film depicts a criminal mind going into a fugue state, it also has echoes of the concepts of samsara and reincarnation from the Buddhist and Hindu philosophies. A haunting and mysterious film that maddeningly contradicts itself and actually becomes more confusing as one pays attention to the details. Keep the eyes peeled for an ultra creepy appearance from actor Robert Blake, who designed his own make-up for the role.

JURASSIC PARK - Overblown dollar-muncher composed of only the most visually impressive, audience baiting action scenes yanked from an intricate and heavily researched work of science fiction by Michael Chrichton. Not that director Steven Spielberg skimped on any aspect besides plot, because Jurassic Park for the early nineties was visually and culturally as stunning and popular as the original "King Kong" was for its time. Still, much of the gore and psychological intrigue of the novel, as well as many potential set pieces were abandoned in favor of extending a few FX scenes that were simply pumped up with orchestral music (and padded out by scenes of more special effects). Rather than attempting to tell a story, the film instead focuses almost whole-heartedly on providing an amusement park experience paralleling that depicted onscreen. Still, the atmosphere is well maintained, and great care and detail is put into the the appearance and behavior of the dinosaurs, and Laura Dern is terrific in her role as a terrorized doctor. Lots of stuff goes by really fast, but it is very exciting. "Fast food" filmmaking, but the joke is on the audience because in this film the people are the food. In that way it's kind of like the real "Jaws 2." I was disappointed as a kid when I saw this one (I was about 10 years old at the time), because my favorite aspect of the book was the pterodactyl house, which is shorn from the film.

MARTIN - Morose, downbeat George Romero vampire flick with a starkly realistic take on the genre. Harsh, cold industrial working-class atmosphere, filmed in real apartments and businesses on a shoestring budget. Definitely unlike any other vampire movie made before or since. Martin is just a guy who thinks he's hundreds of years old and craves the blood of young women, whom he appeals to the sympathies of and victimizes when they least expect it. Truly depressing and unexpected film, that will have you thinking long after the credits are done rolling. Touching performance from John Amplas.

SPIDER BABY - First movie from Jack Hill, exploitation guru behind several of the Roger Corman-produced women in prison jungle movies as well as the Pam Grier vehicles "Coffy" and "Foxy Brown." Very different in mood from any of his other pictures, much more akin to the Addams Family than something like "Switchblade Sisters." Two beautiful girls live in a decrepit mansion with their deranged brother brother and some sort of older caretaker played by Boris Karloff. He has his hands full due to the younger generations proclivity towards random acts of murder (which they refer to as playing "spider"). Guests arrive, which leads to a huge culture shock between the freaks and the norms, and there are some knifings and so forth. The actress who plays the titular "Spider Baby" was a girlfriend of Marlon Brando at one point, whom he apparently loved deeply long after her unfortunately early death. She is captivatingly beautiful in her role as a deranged, overgrown child with a penchant for murder. A really fun picture with a great atmosphere, featuring a rare appearance by Mantan Moreland. Watch out kids, it's in black and white.

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE - First Dario Argento movie and the solidification of many of the giallo conventions (black gloves, razors, beautiful and sometimes deadly women). Dario Agento grew up the child of a fashion photographer, and says that from a very young age he understood how to properly capture a beautiful woman on camera. In this film, the murderer follows his victims and photographs them from afar, and as in all Argento films he uses his own hands for the killer's hands during the murder scenes, acting out the part of the murderer himself. The beginning of a long-running experimentation with a fetishistic analysis of beauty and mortality that has continued throughout Argento's career. The main actor guy in this one kind of annoys me, but everything else is really great, especially the music by Ennio Morricone. If you are interested in the giallo genre in any capacity whatsoever, some awareness of the movie is crucial. Not the best or craziest, but very historically important.

THE ELEPHANT MAN - Wrenching paen to human sympathy adapted from a scientific analysis of the case of John Merrick, a man born during the industrial revolution who was afflicted with various ailments. These ailments caused him to have a distorted physical appearance that was disturbing to society. Powerful, lyrical filmmaking gives the story a surreal air that makes the lessons learned by Merrick and experiences endured by him relateable to everyday human concerns and fears. Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt act their asses off showing what its like to be in the 1800s, and David Lynch reins in his "Eraserhead" horrors for a story aimed at a wider audience. I remember making my parents rent this for me a bunch of times when I was about six years old, along with "The Man With Two Brains" (starring Steve Martin and Kathleen Turner), which I was also totally obsessed with. What a weird kid! A powerful film to this day, with similarities in tone to Lynch's forgotten G-rated Disney picture "The Straight Story."

PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES - John Hughes made a really weird one this time. Ostensibly a "buddy comedy" starring Steve Martin and John Candy, this one is actually an odd parable about extending kindness and not judging others for their shortcomings... about trying to appreciate people for what they have to offer. The title of the film, as well as the themes of transportation and vessels that we take to get where we are going, suggests an existential, Bhuddist-like philosophy regarding our earthly existence and the trials and tribulations that our soul jourmeys through. This was Hughes first attempt at an "adult" comedy after a famous series of teen comedies (culminating in the ubiquitous "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and genre favorite "The Breakfast Club"). At the time of this film, both leading men were at an early stage of their career. Significant small roles are filled out by Dylan Baker (the pedophilic psychiatrist from Todd Solondz' "Happiness") and "Bueller" teacher Ben Stein, among others. Steve Martin's character runs the gamut of emotions, and both men end up having a genuine and warm connection by the end of the film. An enjoyable film that represents the end of a peak in Hughes career of hugely successful and influential motion pictures that would change the expectations people could have about comedy films, influencing recent comedy dramas such as "The Beaver" and "World's Greatest Dad."

ZOMBIE - Not one to turn down an opportunity for exploitation, the success of George Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead" (also called "Zombi" in Italy and reviewed below) caused Fulci to try his hand at a movie about the living dead. In his home land, the film was called "Zombi 2" in an attempt to convince the audience that it was in fact a sequel to Romero's completely unrelated film. However, the depiction of the living dead in Fulci's work is rather unique onto itself, and this film is filled with many original touches that have made it the cult classic that it is now considered to be. Much care and attention is paid to the decay and rot in the faces and bodies of the living dead entities... Their genuine appearance is rather unique at this point in horror filmmaking, and certainly influential on others to come. On top of all this Fulci piles on memorable scenes, such as an infamous eye-gouging sequence and a long underwater battle between a zombie and a shark. If you want to know who wins, you will have to watch the movie! Coming off of the beautiful, subtle noir of "The Psychic" starring Jennifer O' Neil, Fulci was bold and at the top of his form with this compelling and atmospheric Tisa Farrow-starring gorefest. Great score and theme by Fabio Frizzi also, this is one of Lucio Fulci's most solid and consistent films, featuring a genuinely creepy ending that manages to creep me out on repeated viewings.

THE BEYOND - Lucio Fulci went completely over the top for this Louisiana-shot epic of interdimensional gore and exploding heads. Featuring a lot of spooky ghost scenes that seem to have influenced modern J-horror and even some stuff like M. Night Shyamalan. Lots of gore and nonsensical stuff, mostly regarding zombies rising up because of some Necronomicon kind of business going on. Very creepy classic Italo-score from Fabio Frizzi that loops through the film and will stay in your head for days after viewing it. Complete and utter nonsense, but somewhat of a masterpiece of its style, combining the haunted house story, supernatural thriller, zombie movie, and hardcore gore picture into an expressionistic and confounding brew. If you need to fill your quota of exploding heads and melting people, pick this one up!

BAMBI - An odd sleeper from the Walt Disney company adapted from the work of a German boudoir photographer. Completely animated in beautiful full color, and including all of the butt-fixation and hypnotic, mind-control influenced use of colors that one associates with the early years of the Disney studio. A deeply pagan devotion to nature, and a disdain for man is represented in the storytelling of this tale of a "young prince" born in the meadow. Beautifully drawn and voiced tale of life deep in the wilderness, for those who can tolerate such sacchrine and romanticized a view of nature.

WALPURGISNACHT - Also known as "Werewolf Vs. Vampire Woman." Starring the recently deceased Paul Naschy in his role as the werewolf, who managed to continue this series of Spanish horror pictures for quite some time. This film seems a little bit like a much lower eschelon version of a Hammer Picture, especially bearing a bit of resemblance to the amazing "Vampire Lovers" which was recently issued on a DVD in conjunction with the lesser "Countess Dracula." Scenes of the titular Vampire Woman are quite satisfying, and the film is not adverse to depicting murders with plenty of thick syrupy blood. Good performance by Naschy and great sets + highly atmospheric scenes of surrealistic violence inflicted upon the innocent in Gothic castles. In beautiful full color (where available)!

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 3: THE DREAM WARRIORS - This is the true sequel to Wes Craven's imaginative horror epic "Nightmare On Elm Street." One of the few projects where Craven really stretches his intellectual prowess and explores the possibilities of the horror genre. Heather Langenkamp, star of the first picture, reprises her role from part one as a former Elm Street resident, coming back to help the next generation haunted by the burned man who stalks them in their nightmares. This one had a really different original script (which is much more positive toward psychiatry, ala John Carpenter's recent "The Ward") by Craven, that was also more metaphorical in its use of Freddy than the final version. The script that the final film is based on was reworked by several studio-hired writers, including Frank Darabount (who would go on to direct an excellent adaptation of "The Mist" and other notable Stephen King book-to-film translations). This picture was designed to be a blockbuster smash hit and readily achieved this status, but at the heart of the movie lies the psychosexual battle of adolescence amidst the mystery of dreams. Freddy really steals the show this time, chatting it up with bawdy one liners that were even more sexually overt in Craven's original screenplay. His boogeyman persona from the first film is adapted into a more sarcastic and comedic form of Satanic torment. Pumping up the teen movie aspect of the first film with an expanded cast of characters beyond Nancy (including parts played by Patricia Arquette and a scene-stealing Jennifer Rubin), this film really expands the Elm Street universe to include all manner of disenfranchised youth. Jennifer Rubin's scenes as Taryn are especially powerful thanks to her vulnerable and realistic performance as a drug-using teen haunted by the nightmare monger Freddy. Patricia Arquette emits screams in this film that absolutely pierce the veil of sanity, must be heard to be believed. Overall a surprisingly sympathetic and haunting horror sequel with plenty of surreal death scenes doled out by expert scenery muncher Robert Englund, reprising his famous fire-damaged face of evil. Wes Craven knowingly manipulates his study of psychological trauma to create a character that continues to shock and amaze. A good example of how a horror sequel and expand the universe and themes of the original in a fairly tasteful way. Freddy seems to exist as the evil aspects of Christianity (fear of Hell, fear of sexuality, self-abuse in the name of guilt etc) combined into one guy who sees when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake... Spooky!

JUNO - In this Steven Spielberg-produced sequel to his smash hit "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," a pregnant teenager arrives from outer space to teach the world around her about the values of her home planet. She takes a hilarious visit to an abortion clinic, and ultimately decides to give her baby to these really weird people who are a couple composed of a former slacker guy and a total Stepford Wife type of lady who is completely frightening. When I think of this movie I get thirsty for Sunny Delite, which Juno walks around drinking during the opening. Excellent dialogue by my hero, Diablo Cody. I also love when Juno throws up in the umbrella holder. It's a real tour de force with a lot of great snappy banter. On repeat viewings, I want to fast-forward through all the parts about that weird grunge/yuppie duo.

HALLOWEEN 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH - Lot of "3"s on this list... I guess the third time is the charm for Hollywood in some cases. John Carpenter was the producer on this one, and it seems that he and Debra Hill (co-writer and producer of the original blockbuster slasher film "Halloween") wanted to bring the "Halloween" franchise into the direction of being a continuing horror anthology series about different stories set around Halloween. Although this was a very promising idea and could have yielded interesting results, the audiences were displeased with a sequel that had nothing to do with the popular Michael Myers character, the unstoppable juggernaut of death from Haddonfield that the first two films dealt with. As a result the series has continued to have a multitude of sequels (none of which have anything to do with Carpenter or Hill for the most part) regurgitating the original concept of the killing machine Michael Myers over and over again. With the strange druidic references in the second "Halloween," this works as somewhat of a capper for a trilogy of mask-related Samhain horror from Carpenter and Hill, that far surpasses the multitudes of slashers that followed in the wake of the initial Halloween film. Witness in particular the ugly Rob Zombie-helmed "Halloween remakes" that have soiled theater screens as of late. This one, however, deals with an evil Irish man who uses Halloween masks to control children and cause worldwide havoc in the name of ancient Samhain rituals. Preposterous, fun stuff based somewhat in fact and allegory that will greatly entertain fans of Carpenter's psycho-social critiques of the 80's such as "They Live" or "Prince Of Darkness." Excellent ambient score by Carpenter himself as well that will keep you on the edge of your set. If you ever found yourself wondering if he made any others like those ones, you will get a kick out of this one, which bears an excellent original score by the man himself. A classic.

INFERNO - I wonder: does Dario Argento hate cats? First there is the artist who eats felines in "The Bird With Crystal Plumage," and here in this one we have a scene where a character is assaulted by cats who are thrown at them from offscreen. Of all of Argento's films, this one probably makes the least sense and is the most consistently visually stunning. Much like "Vampyros Lesbos," this is one that I do not fully understand the plot even though I have watched it many times. There is an incredible underwater sequence in this one that is one of the best underwater sequences that I have seen on film up until the recent indie thriller "Turistas" (which is actually quite bogged down with such well-made sequences toward the end). If you remember the evil dance academy run by witches from the initial part of this Mothers Of Darkness trilogy, this one is the second part which focuses on an evil college maybe? I will have to watch this one again. I sometimes prefer "Opera" to this one, but I am a heretic. Lovely film.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON - This movie is the reason why Michael Jackson chose Jonathan Landis (director of "Animal House") to film his music video for "Thriller." Landis was dumbfounded that Jackson had not been familiar with any of his work besides this oddly upbeat violent psychosexual werewolf thriller. The transformation sequences are harrowing, and if nothing else the tortured, sexual aspect of the wolfman archetype is explored fully in this movie in a way that few others have attempted. A pounding old-time rock and r+b soundtrack gives a frat-house air to the film, which is typified by extremely realistic gore effects mixed in with more fantastical and comedic effects-laden dream/hallucination sequences. Overall the effect of the film is extremely surreal, dark, and highly effective, easily one of the best pictures to explore the werewolf genre. The dream sequence where nazi werewolf commanders destroy an idyllic suburban evening will freak you out just when you least expect it!

MEAN GIRLS - Held off on this one for a few years because I didn't understand how a well-written non-fiction self-help book for girls could be turned into a funny teen romantic comedy, but Tina Fey and the director of this one really did a good job here. Lindsay Lohan's character has the pretense of being raised in the African jungle in order to present her as coming into High School girl dynamics with no previous awareness of how to play the game. With this as the setup, Tina Fey explores the concepts of the book that this was based on (written by the founder of "The Empower Program"). For fans of movies like "Clueless" and "Heathers," this one is a nicely made socially conscious girl-oriented comedy with some light "thriller" themes. Very nice deleted scenes on this one, and a hilarious script from Fey.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE - The first time I ever watched this movie it was at a house party when I was a teenager, and the entire audience erupted with howling laughter during the scene when the brother in the wheelchair falls down a hill while attempting to urinate in a bucket. I was shocked at my friends' reactions at the time, but on repeated viewings I wonder if it is intended for a big laugh. Simply some kind of "down home" Texas humor about handicapped people interjected into the beginning of the movie I guess. Small band of teenagers stumbles upon the exact wrong family of weirdos and becomes (for the most part) future fodder for their special brand of cuisine. The first in a popular, often imitated (see Wes Craven's original "The Hills Have Eyes") style of horror picture that proved to be very lucrative for Tobe Hooper. The subtle mix of comedy and horror is lost at times to the nightmarish tone and mood of the film, although the evidence for comedic intention is there. Overall the muddy lighting and low budget set decoration comes together to create an atmosphere that brings out the most disturbing aspects of the script, putting the audience in a living nightmare for an hour and a half and providing no respite from the insanity. A powerful satire shot with the feel of a documentary film, creating a modern myth that resonates to this day as a depiction of true horror in the world that we live in.

THE BLACK CAT - This one by Lucio Fulci is pretty interesting, and has a great scene with Daniela Doria. Daniela Doria appears in several of Fulci's films, perhaps most notably in New York Ripper (she plays the prostitute whose eyeball and nipple are slashed by the titular "Ripper") and City Of The Living Dead (where she literally vomits up her own guts under the control of an evil wizard). In this one, she is completely naked before her death (see also "New York Ripper") and her painful demise is administered by Fulci in the form of some kind of foaming at the mouth/rabies situation. Doria appeared in only a few other movies besides these Fulci ones, most of them silly romantic/sexual comedies from around the same area of time. Fulci once remarked of Doria that she was exceptionally beautiful, and that he had killed her many times. A weird movie with an aggressive performance from Patrick Macgee (the writer guy in "A Clockwork Orange" who takes revenge on Alex by making him listen to Beethoven).

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS - Career-defining performances from Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in this one, and a powerful 90s font and overall tone permeates the film. This one has aged quite well in comparison to its various sequels and prequels. The structure and colors of the film seem to have done a lot to inspire the look and feel of many police/crime dramas that are on television to this day (lots of the color blue and stark office lighting etc in the police dept, dark and muddy most other crime-ridden places on earth). However, the cases in this film are highly stylized and do not represent a completely realistic portrayal of forensic research, much less any realistic depictions of evil. The character of Hannibal Lecter in particular is unrealistic as an actual individual, but still serves as a powerful metaphor for particular forces of academia and accomplishment in our own world, judging the rest of us from behind the screen of officiality. The choice of the Shakesperian actor Anthony Hopkins for the role was certainly an inspired one, and it is the role that more than any other he will continue to be associated with by the public at large. Gotta give props to Buffalo Bill, and he's got some legendary dialogue ("It puts the lotion on it's skin..."). The scene where he dances in front of the mirror while listening to atmospheric post-punk and hiding his genitals will have you reaching for the light switch.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Despite the huge popularity of these films in the sci-fi community, I have never been a fan of this series. The idea of actors and actresses with rubbery, ape-human hybrid makeup over their face has always been a conceptual conceit that I have been unwilling to get on board with. My grandfather apparently loved the original novels and 70s pictures however, and once I had read that this movie was not about ape people, but instead about an uprising of super-intelligent CGI-generated apes, my curiousity was piqued. I have to say that, although somewhat flawed, I really loved this movie, which has a strong theme of animal liberation and the struggle for education and freedom among humans. In particular, the final sequence, where a battalion of various escaped monkeys battle the San Francisco police in a standoff on the Golden Gate bridge, will take your breath away with inventive and powerful movie making. Really amazing use of CGI for the apes in this one, I highly recommend seeing it in the theatre if possible. Incredible attention to detail is paid in the stunningly realistic movement and body language of the CGI characters. I am not a fan of CGI in general but the idea of using it to bring apes to life in story of evolutionary struggle is a brilliant idea. Xavier fans take note. A pretty good movie, I liked it a lot.

DAY OF THE DEAD - The subplot of "Avatar" involving the Sigourney Weaver science-lady character at odds with the military people seems lifted directly from the main plot of this film. Possibly occurring simultaneously with the previous "Dawn Of The Dead," scientists and military people deep below the Earth struggle against madness while surrounded on all sides by flesh eating zombies. Opens with some really nice scenes of the post zombie apocalypse downtown city shots, and towards the end this one has some really intense scenes of gore. A little more cerebral and talky than the other Romero zombie pictures, the majority of this one is centered around the scientists attempt to train or communicate with the zombies, and the military peoples incredulity to the validity of the experiments. The breakdown of civilization is represented in the inability for the military and scientific minds to come together. The main military guy gives an over-the-top performance, yelling roughly fifty percent of all of his lines in an outraged New York dialect. Perhaps inspired by Fulci's "unofficial sequel" that was released in the meantime, the gore and zombie effects are even more advanced from the gruesome "Dawn Of The Dead." This movie has a lot of heart though also, and takes time to vocalize in dialogue a lot of the social issues brought up in the previous film. This should have been the capper to the series, as the many remakes and sequels that have emerged in recent years have proven to be disappointing compared to these moody films from the golden era of gore horror. This one has a lot to say about education and civilization.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING - Chris Columbus movie that is not entirely vomit-inducing. Opening segment with Elizabeth Shue dancing around her room while lip-synching and dancing in her bed clothes is stunning, and the actress who portrays the younger sister of the family is manic and compelling. A preposterous "plot" involving rich parents throwing a party in a skyscraper, an underground network of multiracial car thieves who control all crime in New York, and various other insanely assembled stereotypes vie for viewer attention as the plucky, intrepid youths are placed in various life-threatening situations (including a fraternity party). Ultimately they are saved by a generous rich man who just gives them the money that they need to get back home out of the goodness of his rich heart. Not sure what the message is with this one, but in general it is a fun romp despite the complete nonsense that the viewer is forced to endure. As insulting to the intelligence as it is cute and charming, a poor man's attempt at some kind of John Hughes family picture/teen movie/adventure crossover that continues to amuse viewers to this day. Look for Vincent D'Onofrio, fresh out of Full Metal Jacket boot camp, in his appearance as an auto mechanic that is mistaken for Thor by the little girl, an overzealous comic book fan. Some preposterous scenarios here, but this one is still good for a few yuks after all these years.

THE PSYCHIC - Although it was directed by Lucio Fulci, one of the few hints to the viewer is a sole scene of gore with a woman's face being peeled off by the rocky side of a cliff, as well as a tone of casual misogyny. Jennifer O' Neill stars in this restrained and tense stylish giallo-esque thriller. The use of color and subtle techniques of visual storytelling that are employed are very opposite from the style that Fulci would soon embrace, of pure horror and over-the-top gore. A tense and visually beautiful movie that explores the concepts of time and extrasensory perception, filled with a subtle array of details that tell a complex story. Hard to find compared to some of Fulci's other pictures that came right afterward, but definitely worth seeking out if you can deal with a non-gore late-70s Fulci movie.

TENEBRE - After delving into the supernatural with Daria Nicolodi in "Suspiria" and "Inferno," Argento returns to the silver screen to put his once-favorite muse in the middle of another series of beautifully filmed deaths. This time around, we leave behind the witchcraft of the previous two films and return to the genre for which Argento is best known, the Giallo-style thriller. A black-gloved killer is disposing of beautiful women, this time in Manhattan instead of Rome. The Goblin soundtrack this time around is in an Italo-Disco style that the group's leader had recently begun to work in, having several hits independent of film work in this style. The style is creepy and upbeat, still rather catchy- the same could be said about the film. Some amazingly orchestrated sequences of gore, including an impressive and unforgettable climax where modern art once again becomes a murder weapon under Dario's precise direction. Witness the climax of "Bird With The Crystal Plumage" also, where the killer is crushed under some hideous expressionist statue at the end. Like many of Dario Argento's movies, it makes practically no logical sense and is completely beautiful to behold. Nice long shot in the middle that completely wraps around the architecture of a building that some of the female victims are in provides a truly original sequence in this extremely well made motion picture.

DAWN OF THE DEAD - The original, of course, directed by George Romero and starring Ken Foree etc. I was always a big fan of the first "Night Of The Living Dead," which I had rented from the public library when I was around eight or nine years old. I was shocked to see scenes of (dead) people eating intestines and limbs onscreen, even in the stark black and white it was a real shock, and not quite what I had expected from the film, much less was I ready for the bleak finale. Those guts-munching scenes really blew my mind, but it still could not prepare me for the full-on gore of the sequel, "Dawn Of The Dead," which I saw maybe four or five years later. Now into the full-color era, the zombies were a little different this time in that they are painted blue in order to distinguish them from the humans. The dead have risen from their graves and are multiplying exponentially, and this movie documents the attempts for survival of a small group of people who escaped from Philedelphia amidst zombie chaos. Although it gets long in the middle, this survival epic takes what worked about the first film and amplifies it a million-fold, placing the viewer into a fascinating and well fleshed-out video game-like environment of dystopian zombie chaos and mall exploration. The gore is ramped up and the full color palatte of human intestines (plus plenty of bright red gore) is explored. In addition to plenty of classic guts munching type of scenes, this movie also includes shot after shot of the classic paradigm of seeing the living dead getting blown to smithereens. Alongside "Martin," this is easily one of Romero's most influential and artistically successful films, depicting a world falling apart that is not so different from our own. Romero keeps the mood of the film somewhere between a action/survival thriller, socially satirical black comedy, and stark guts-churning horror that continues to influence the action and horror genres to this day. Keep an eye out for a brilliant scene involving local hunters and gun enthusiasts having a tailgate party, cracking some brews while taking out zombies in the rural outlying areas of town. A masterpiece of full-force filmmaking that has stood the test of time... Even after many attempts to one-up the stakes that this one raised the zombie genre to, the first sequel to the landmark original zombie film is still the best.

HANNAH MONTANA, THE MOVIE - Although I am a big fan of her song "Party In The U.S.A.," Miley's feature film debut is a bit of a mixed bag for me. The opening scenes of Miley and Jamie Spears wrecking havoc backstage are a lot of fun, and the performance as Hannah Montana in front of an unreal audience that looks like it's composed of a million people at the beginning is impressively composed. The movie quickly devolves into a bizarre turn toward "country" values, including an extensive stint with a grandmother who seems to have never encountered the young pop star before. She strikes up a friendship with a young country boy who just wants to sell eggs for a living, and ends up decorating his egg shack in a colorful manner towards the end of the film. The schizophrenic, have-it-both-ways ending resolves nothing, and ultimately I leave the movie concerned for the girl. Her father plays himself in a movie about their life and chooses to portray his character as a heartless dictator over Miley's life, who gets personal enjoyment by striking up relationships with women and ends them on a whim. However, her performances and costumes are golden as always, and there is an excellent girl-fight between Miley Cyrus and Tyra Banks that results in Miley's exile from Hollywood into down-home country values. The pseudo anti-corporate vibe coming from this one is rather cloying coming from Disney. A mixed bag, handle with care.

THE FOG - John Carpenter's follow-up to "Halloween" was so subtle that he initially had forgotten to even include a villian. In fact, upon watching the completed first version of the film, Carpenter and his co-workers realized that they had put something together that absolutely (in their opinion) did not work. They went back and added many of the scenes that are the most iconic and frightening within the film. "The Fog" is a slow-burning, atmospheric horror picture about a small town community slowly overcome by the quite literal ghosts of the past (in the form of a bunch of angry pirates played by various crew members, friends, and special effects artists). Jamie Lee Curtis, Diane Loomis (from "Halloween"), and Adrienne Barbeau all get fairly equal screen time as various townspeople affected by the eerie events brought on in the creeping fog. This is an effective meditation on the sins of the founders of the landwe live on, as well as the ghosts that we may have to answer to for the crimes of the past. "The Fog" even seems to be this veil between the worlds of the living and the dead, some sort of energy that we must one day answer to for our own deeds on the earth. A powerful meditation on mortality with a great cast and some stunningly beautiful visuals (with so small assistance from "Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks" Director of Photography Dean Cundey, who went on to work as DoP for Steven Speilberg on "Jurassic Park"), as well as some genuinely scary sequences from Carpenter in his prime. A+ creeper wth an amazing cast, probably best to avoid the recent remake and head straight for the real thing.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY - Controversial and much-loved film from one of the greatest American directors of all time, Stanley Kubrick. A brutal perfectionist who saw civilization evolving to the point of having manned space stations sending men to Saturn's moons by the year 2001. Ultimately, this is a movie about human development from the standpoint of an alien intelligence. Opening sequences attempt to explain man's first relationship with the stars and evolution from ape-like people. Moonwatcher picks up a bone and uses it as a weapon, securing his family's safety. Human civilization evolves to the point of space travel, culminating in a crew of astronauts being eradicated one by one as a super-intelligent computer decides that they are all expendable. The last surviving astronaut dissasembles the mainframe of the computer, only to discover that he is being monitored and communicated with by extraterrestrials. They transform him into a giant floating fetus at the end, and he looks back at the Earth contemplating blowing the whole thing up (which he does in the novel, but Kubrick stops short of depicting in the film version). A masterpiece of human imagination, probably one of the most important films of all time.

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UNLISTENABLE MUSIC
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AMANDA AND SISSY LOOK AT THE CLOUDS

I don't know why I'm writing this, except that Dr. Sanders thinks that if I write my thoughts down it will help things. She's really nice... I don't agree with all the stuff she wrote about me the hundred page psychological analysis that she gave my dad... but she's really nice. Nobody else ever asked me how I was feeling before I talked to her... it made me feel good. Like somebody cared about me. That's good you know. It's good to feel like somebody cares.
My name is Amanda. They tell me that I'm 16 years old, an "underacheiver," and somewhere around five different three-letter acronyms like "SAD" (social anxiety disorder) and "ODD" (oppositional defiance disorder, developed maybe as a diagnosis by the Society for Alliterative Oxymorons). My mom died a long time ago. I remember what she looks like but sometimes I can't tell the difference from my memory or an old photo. My dad says she was a bitch. I believe him I guess, but he's not really very nice either. Not that I don't have any respect for him or something, but Dr. Sanders says it's good to be realistic. So there you go. Trying to keep it real. My mom was a writer, and she once wrote that you can never write about stuff that isn't real, because people will know.
I guess being honest is keeping it real. I definitely don't want to go crazy. My friend Sissy says that she talks to faeries, but that they look like little hairy skull-faced bugs. They're small and white and she says that they talk a lot about death and where you go when you die. You know, serious stuff. It really freaked me out, like this one time when this boy from my homeroom told me about why they have that phone dialing sound at the beginning of old Disney VHS tapes. He said that if you held your phone up to it that your location would be recorded and the Disney corporation would use it for their research. Creepy!
Sissy is a strange girl. She would always have on weird bracelets that she designed herself, and instead of paying attention in class and listening to the teacher she spent most of the class time just drawing animals. The day after the whole school heard the news that her parents had been killed in a freak accident involving circus elephants, she just showed up to class like nothing was wrong. Everyone looked at her with their fake concern, and were surpised to feel a reaction of absolutely no concern whatsoever. That day, the gym teacher, the dreaded and emotionless Miss Anderson, tried to make Sissy dress out for P.E. like all the other girls. Sissy had asked to be able to sit out but Anderson was relentless in pushing Sissy to participate. After all the girls changed in the locker room, they got in line for roll call. When Anderson was standing in front of Sissy, she towered over the girl and blurted her name.
"Judith Hutchins."
Although she was supposed to say something like "here" or "present" to indicate that she was in class, Sissy just stayed silent while the teacher stared her down.
"Judith, are you going to participate like all the other girls, or are you just going to stand there and pout? Stop wasting everyone's time and reply when your name is stated like you are supposed to."
Sissy remained quiet and looked up, locking eyes with Anderson's steely gaze. Anderson wore one of three different track suits on any given day of school, and today she wore a white Adidas sweatsuit with a matching pair of shoes. Sissy glared so hard into Miss Anderson's eyes that the teacher did not notice the pool that was forming beneath her legs from a warm and wet substance dripping onto her white shoes. Anderson looked down and saw that Sissy had urinated all over her shoes and that it had splashed onto her track suit as well because she had been standing so close to the girl. Sissy's gaze was still fixed on Miss Anderson who was bright red, seething with anger, but completely speechless.
"I think I have to change back into my other clothes. I'm going to go do that now."
She walked out of class and went home. The other girls were all giggling, some of them feigning shock, but we were actually pretty stoked about it. Anderson was a major pain and nobody liked her. Her face looked so strained with rage that we thought that her head was going to explode. No one said a word to her about it and ever since that day I have always wondered what was up with that girl. I saw her that afternoon sitting in front of her house just laying in the grass and staring up at the sky. She did that kind of stuff a lot. Her sister is really spaced out too... she's always walking around on the phone eating pizza or something and dropping toppings on the ground. At least their cats get a lot of protein out of the deal. She looked kind of sad, so I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was watching the clouds and imagining that each one was a part of a story.
"Look, that one is a camel. This guy over there had to leave it out in the desert so that he could get into his car over there to ride away with all of those rutebegas."
"How do you dilenate time in your narrative?" I said, outraged. "The one that looks like a car comes first."
"That's acccording to how you see it. Time isn't like that."
"What?"
"Look, there's a pirate ship." I looked up and she was right. The masthead on the sails even had a large skull glaring down at us. I looked at it longer and it started to look more like a pac-man in a baby carriage. Soon it all started to drift apart and the sky started to clear up a little bit. I thought that she was going to get up, but she just started talking to me about death and stuff. I asked her what happens to you when you die, and she just laughed and said "Haven't you ever been to a funeral?"
"But those faeries that you talk to... you said that they told you about where people go when they die."
"Well, that's just the thing. We're not people. We just live inside people until the time is up. Like when you run out of gas in your car and it just stops. Then we go away and leave behind the car."
"But what are we if we are not people?"
"I dunno. Spirits, I guess."
"Huh."
I laid down next to Sissy and we watched the sun go down. Since the clouds had gone away it was a really clear night. Can't remember the last time that I had seen so many stars before. I heard that it was going to be full tonight.

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HEAVY METAL PIZZA
(PART ONE: WHAT KIND OF A WORLD...?)

Kevin observed a sign in a window that caught his eye: "OVERSTUFFED PO-BOYS."
He couldn't believe it. It hadn't been since back when he was in what was now called "Old New Orleans" that he had seen such a beautiful sight. The "po-boy," of course, is a large sandwich associated with the Louisiana region, comparable to a "submarine" or "hero" sandwiches from other American locales. Typically, they will be filled with a seafood from the region (often fried), a meat (roast beef for instance), or even french fries, as well as being dressed with lettuce, tomato, maybe mayo, brown gravy, hot sauce, ketchup (for fried food). "Overstuffed" would indicate the presence of a lot of this extra food, and was a common promise in the classic days of the po-boy.
After the great calamity of 2012, his old home of New Orleans had been overtaken by oil companies and military contractors who had built New New Orleans into an industrial nightmare that in no way carried on the culture of his youth. "Old" New Orleans was completely flooded over, and built over the watery mass grave was essentially a gigantic oil rig on the Northwest corner of the Gulf of Mexico. All of the restaurants and locales that he used to know so well were gone forever. In the intervening years while this was occurring, after the great cataclysm, Kevin was thrust into the swampy marshland of the outlying areas and take up arms against local wildlife in order to survive. He spent about a year surviving on alligator meat and coon tails, hiding from cannibals and thieves. In 2014, with the great war going on across the entire world, unbeknownst to Kevin, his hiding place was discovered by the unjudgemental and unstoppable forces of Emperor Chang and his oppressive robot forces. They had destroyed all semblance of human culture in the Gulf South of the United States, and the whole area was turned into a giant oil refinery/military port where Kevin and thousands of others were put to work by armies of oppressive robots. In 2027, A computer virus created by several rogue programmers wreaked havoc on Chang's empire, and in the end he was hung from the rafters in a public ceremony as the humans finally overtook the machines that had been enslaving us.
Now it was 2028, and Kevin was finally free after years of hard labor to the robots, and here was this restaurant establishment that declared on a large sign the promise of "OVERSTUFFED PO-BOYS." The storefront was of a generic style with a brick storefront with a large neon corporate sign reading "HOT DOGS, SAUSAGES, AND PIZZA," which appeared to be the name of the business. Ovrall the outside resembled more a dollar store or outlet store than a retaurant, but back in the old days looks could be deceiving as well. Some of the best po-boys would come from generic, otherwise unremarkable storefronts, so he was willing to go along for the ride with this place... but something was off about it. When he walked into the front room, it seemed like the lights had actually gotten slightly dimmer, and although he saw nobody in the place he swore he could hear the sound of footsteps nearby.
"Hello? Is anyone here?" His voice echoed throughout the lobby area. Maybe it was shut down or something? Kevin looked around and soaked up a bit of his surroundings. Perhaps in his zeal for an overstuffed po-boy, he had overlooked the incredibly sketchy nature of the establishment that he had walked into. There was no menu visable, no cash register for that matter, and the walls were completely blank save for the large painting of a man who appeared to be the founder of the organization. It was a very bizarre scene: a prim and proper, well dressed man sits on the palm of his hand, with his other hand resting between his crossed thighs. He appears to have been drawn sitting down in a room, but behind him has been inserted a backdrop of the unmistakeable Louisiana swamp landscape, with several easily identifiable swamp creatures such as birds and frogs interspersed with the landscape. What a strange position for a man to be sitting, thought Kevin. The old-timey nature of the man's accuturements offset the strange and almost obscene nature of his body language. The man's face was a steely, Dutch-looking face sinister, and beneath the painting read the legend: "Hiram J. Abraham Himmelstein III: Founder of Hot Dogs, Sausages, and Pizza."
"Wow," Kevin thought out loud, hypnotized by the bizarre portrait in front of him. This was definitely not right.
"Can I help you?!?" screeched an eerily hateful pre-pubescent voice from behind the counter.
"Yes, sir..." Kevin was taken off-gaurd because before him he clearly saw a counter, and heard a voice speaking to him, but could not see who it was that was creating the sound. "Do you have any menus available? I came inside because I saw your sign advertising overstuffed po-boys..." This was clearly not right. Kevin had a horrible feeling about this place and knew that something was really off. This could be the best damn overstuffed po-boy what ever existed, but was beyond bad service, this was outright unusual. Kevin looked down, below the shiny metal counter from where he was standing over, and saw a small malnourished boy with a disturbed expression tatooed on his face. His wide, obscenely hungry eyes pierced into Kevin like the probe rays of his former robot masters.
"I'll get you a menu. Just hold on."
From the wall underneath the painting of Hiram J. Abraham Himmelstein III came a mechanical whirr, accompanied by part of the wall spinning around and compartmentalizing as a group of small, gangly looking children weilding butcher knives emerged from secret doors on either side of the room. They all had the same hungry and uncaring look of the boy behind the counter. Kevin reached into his pocket for an old can of mace, hoping that it hadn't evaporated over the years of sitting in work camp. This was getting to be a little more than he was expecting to have to deal with today...

(CONTINUED IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF MY GOAT! THE HOME OF EDGE OF YOUR SEAT EXCITEMENT!!!!)

------------------------------

{COMING IN NOVEMBER
JUST IN TIME FOR THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY:
!!!!!!!MY GOAT #5!!!!!!!
FEATURES WILL INCLUDE-
WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS: THE TRUE STORY OF KAREN CARPENTER
REVENGE OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS
THE JEFFERY DAHMER STORY PART 3: THE BOYS OF SUMMER
IN THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD: THE CONFESSIONS OF DENNIS RADER
HEAVY METAL PIZZA PART 2: THE RETURN OF YARMULKER
THE REST OF THE 50 CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS
~ALSO THERE WILL BE AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT THE FUTURE OF AMERICA~
!!!!!!!ALL THIS AND MORE, IN THE NEXT ACTION-PACKED ISSUE OF MY GOAT!!!!!!!}

Questions, comments, etc: harshhumanignorance@gmail.com

2011-09-27T20:30:00.001-07:00

MY GOAT #3
IN THE EYES OF A PREDATOR

*************************************

RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS:
THE STORY OF JEFFERY DAHMER
(Part One, The Early Years)

"I'll say goodbye to love... no one ever cared if I should live or die. Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by and all I know of love is how to live without it..." - Carpenters

When serial murderer Jeffery Dahmer went to trial in the early 1990s for his infamously antisocial lifestyle decisions, the pre-Internet culture was stunned and sickened by the surprising brutality of the man's offenses. Police had discovered a personal residence that was populated with human corpses in various stages of mutilation and decay, as well as plastered with photographs of similar actions. His refrigerator famously contained meat patties made out of human flesh, as well as other organs prepared as food, and entire human heads frozen for preservation. His collection and consumption of human remains for his own pleasure was both so shocking and transgressive to the general public that details of the case made national headlines. Referred to as a cannibal and a monster by the mainstream press, readers who moved past the grisly headlines and delved deeper into the story found a sensitive and odd man behind the headlines, who was far more complex upon further inspection. In contrast to the press-hungry and showboating antics of such notorious serial murderers as Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, Dahmer was a quiet and humble individual, with an odd sensitivity and unique sense of humor. His appearance in court, always resembling the smart-alec-yet-contrite persona that enabled him to make his way through a troubled High School career, elicited sympathy and an odd sense of awe. He thoughtfully but emotionlessly listened to a room full of people describe the events of his life up until that point with the face of a detached observer. He was as quiet, passive, and sullen as he was often described before his final arrest, a state that many viewers likely found oddly sympathetic and relateable to their own lives, observed from afar in a distant manner. He expressed a desire to keep his victims with him forever, expressing a deep-rooted fear of abandonment and belief that he would never be loved in the way that he desired by another person. This side-steps the very present notion of Dahmer's inherent elitism in his actions, and the extreme lack of sympathy obviously enacted in the ultimate decision of Dahmer's crimes. These feelings that overtook him were indeed the result of an over-arching desire for human connection, relating all the way back to an infantile fear of abandonment. Dahmer's crimes were simultaneously those of a child crying out in loneliness, an expression of scientific cruelty, and a private ritual for a personal power and strength. Although referred to as an inhuman beast by the hypocritical and moralizing media who made him a star, the deviation and cruelty of Jeffery Dahmer represents a deep sadness and yearning for love, as well as the death of the innocent nature of that yearning, going back to the dawn of humanity and the first understanding of our mortality.

"When I was young I'd listen to the radio waiting for my favorite songs. When they played I'd sing along. It made me smile."

Jeffery Dahmer, in his own words, started out "just like anybody else." He was the first born child of a couple who would eventually divorce, which would weigh heavily upon him, and color his view of human relationships. He spent much of his upbringing with his parents hearing the couple fighting, and when his younger brother David was born their parents were soon to move into separate bedrooms from one another. The parents lived a loveless relationship that seemed to be based solely on keeping up appearances. Dahmer was an animal lover who did not seek to harm other living creatures as a youngster, but he was deeply fascinated with the inner workings of already-dead animals. Dahmer spent long hours in the forest and would often encounter the dead bodies of animals. When he got a little older, he would often pick up roadkill while out on his bike, where he would bring it back home and bury it after a bit of youthful experimentation with the remains. His brother David regarded the activity as altruistic, seeing his brother's "little cemetery" as a service to the creatures run over by automobiles in the surrounding area. While eating chicken at the dinner table one evening, Jeffery turned to his father and asked what would happen if they were to put the bones of chicken into bleach. This led to an experiment that would prove to be fascinating for the young Dahmer, leading to a later infamous hobby in the exploration and preservation of skeletal remains. He was deeply fascinated from a very young age with the color and texture of internal organs. His awareness of the eating of the flesh of the animal, and thinking about the processes of decomposition and structure, led him to an exploration of personally acting as an agent of the advancement of decomposition on individual humans later on in his life. He entertained a menagerie of small animals, and was fascinated with the inner workings of all living beings. This is reflected in his habit of listening to the heartbeats of his classmates and friends, an interest that would last for the rest of his life. In terms of traditional domestic cohabitation, he had a cat when he was very young that he was deeply attached to, which he had to leave behind when his parents moved to another state with him, as well as a dog when he got older. While away at college, he was informed that his dog had died, further cementing Dahmer's sense of loss and detachment. Friends of the human variety were not often to be found in his youth however, and his parents maintained a relationship that was more like a business relationship than a familial bond. From a very early age Dahmer was raised as a Christian, and he embraced the values of the religion and mystic concepts from a personal standpoint. Although he became re-baptized as a born again Christian in prison shortly before his own murder, it could be argued that the ideas and concepts of the religion influenced him throughout his entire life... man's dominion and subjugation over animals, eating the flesh of Christ, as well as the values of contrition conveyed by his public face to the world upon his various arrests.

"Talking to myself and feeling old... sometimes I'd like to quit, nothing ever seems to fit. Hanging around, nothing to do but frown, rainy days and Mondays always get me down."

He did have several friends in the area that recall spending time with the young Dahmer. They recalled him as introverted and lost in his own individual world, with an intense and vivid fantasy life that bled into his day-to-day existence. He would invent his own games to play with other children, involving the supernatural or other forms of existential horror. One was called "Ghosts In The Graveyard," and involved acting as the living dead. In "Infinity Land," Dahmer created a game where tiny stick men gradually moved toward one another, and when one collided with another it caused them to descend into an infinite netherverse. A spiral was drawn over the offending figure, to indicate the journey into the abyss. The construction of the game shows that at an extremely young age Dahmer had a worldview that was oriented toward a stark and existential relationship with life and death. The rules and structure of the game show that Dahmer saw human contact as a black hole leading to oblivion and existential suffering. In the end, this would be true for him, thanks to events of his own design. Although he had learned the ethics and morals of Christianity in church, he saw around him a vibrant natural world that existed outside of those rules. Later in life he would learn to shallowly manipulate those Christian values in order to obtain leniency for himself and acceptance from others. He was aware of his exclusive attraction to males from a very young age, and likely his awareness of the negativity with which Christian society viewed such behavior fueled his fear of true intimacy. Dahmer was very much "in the closet," determined to live a lifestyle that was approved by those around him while satisfying his compulsions in secret. The denial and hypocrisy involved in such an endeavor were factors that contributed to a deep-seated sense of shame within Dahmer, pushing him to consistently bury his desires under deeper and deeper layers of complexity.
His home life was a stilted and impersonal affair, a common experience to those within the suburban American bourgeoise. The muted anger and mutual dislike between his parents soured him to the concept of romantic partnership, and with no example of shared sensitivity he viewed the entire concept as a hypocritical sham. Dahmer must have learned from a young age how to get what he wanted from others through deception and concealment of purpose by observing the actions of the world around him. He would carry these values with him into adulthood where they would blossom within him to help create a complex worldview that both rejected and drew from the Christian worldview of his youth. He was used to leaving his house for long periods of time due to tension and stilted, uncomfortable relations back at home. He would spend hours alone in the woods, his refuge from authority and a private temple of nature. Within him was a desire for stillness and meditation that could not be afforded within the walls of his home, and the solitude and reality of nature gave him respite. It was in this time that he began to grow sullen and distanced from most of the other people in his life, and the sullen and passive stare that he was photographed wearing in court became the mask with which he was seen by those around him. He first began to cultivate this demeanor from hours spent in his youth just blankly staring at the television, or even just at a blank spot in a wall, deep in reflection. Dahmer's internal world derived from an impossible set of desires, distancing him further and further from the rest of the world with each indulged fantasy. He felt that there was no possible way that he could find a partner with which he could satisfy his desires, and if those desires included the acts that he engaged in with several of his victims (such as using intestines and other internal organs as a masturbation aid) then he was 100% correct in his assessment. Likely the occurance of these paraphilic desires within Dahmer kept him from ever feeling close to those around him, especially his own family who brought him into the world but would come to strongly condemn him for who he had become.

"There are no tomorrows for this heart of mine... surely time will lose these bitter memories and I'll find... something I could live for... Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend... from this day love is forgotten, I'll go on as best I can... There will come a time when I may see that I am wrong, but for now this is my song..."

It is also somewhere around this time that Dahmer admits to begin having thoughts of a sexual attraction to the viscera and internal organs of other humans. He never at any point had thoughts of human sexual interaction that were not invaded with the hint of his desire for sexual violence. Although there is a part of him that seems to commit the violence in a rage, he did not find himself driven by a desire to specifically make his victims suffer. It was simply a closeness to that which was literally inside of them that he desired, a lust that could not be explained or understood, simply seized. This development in his budding sexuality is obviously the primary motivator for the crimes that he was to become famous for, but the exact nexus of this urge was never specifically pinpointed by Dahmer. It appears that his early involvement in the dissection of animal corpses had a sexual component that drove him to further experimentation, but with the mental fantasy of performing such acts on a human being. Dahmer admitted to psychiatrists that he began to have erotic thoughts regarding the corpses of humans as early as the age of 14. It was also around this age that he had his first consensual homosexual encounter, an anonymous experience with a boy around his same age. It is likely that the other boy leaving him, and the loss of contact with the boy afterward triggered his fear of being alone, leading in some way to his fantasies of having a silent, deceased partner of which there was no fear of ever being left by. Dahmer was overcome with a desire for (and a fear of not having) something that is within the deepest yearnings of human loneliness, someone to keep him from feeling like he is alone. It seems that in consensual homosexual encounters that he was able to have, anonymity and lack of identity were key, making the idea that he would ever find a partner who would provide for him what he demanded was impossible and out of reach. He couldn't think of a way to guarantee that they would stay. A telling incident to this end is that of a sexual obsession that the young Dahmer directed toward a jogger who passed by his house almost every day. The man had the exact appearance and physique that Dahmer was fascinated with, and he would watch the man with intense lust as he ran by. The young boy (15 at the time) could not think of any legitimate reason to ask the man to stop, and so driven by lust he became obsessed with the idea of overcoming the man and using him for his own desires. To this end, Jeffery waited alongside the path with a blunt object, determined to capture the man and use him sexually. The man never arrived that day, possibly preventing himself from having the distinction of being Dahmer's first victim by abandoning his routine.

"What to say to make you come again, come back to me again... don't you remember when you told me you loved me baby? You said you'd be coming back this way again maybe? I love you... I really do."

In High School he was known as a prankster, and among his peers (who watched him with a detached amusement and subtle fear, even at this early stage in his life) "doing a Dahmer" was a euphemism for pulling a weird prank. In one more innocent example, Dahmer (an "underacheiving" student with a low grade point average) snuck into the school honor society's yearbook photo, a prank which greatly amused many of the other students who were bringing home similarly disappointing report cards. His face was blocked out of the photo by an indignant yearbook worker, likely resulting in an even creepier reminiscence for the owners of the yearbook. In a more ominous example of Dahmer's desire to amuse himself at the expense of others was his public installation of a dismembered and eviscerated canine that he had discovered. He placed the creature's head on a stick (in his words "for a laugh") and hung the flayed and skinned corpse from a tree nearby where it frightened and disturbed many children and other passers-by. The display was removed by authorities, who of course had no reason to trace it back to the gangly bespectacled boy who lived down the street. Dahmer kept his part in this particular activity a secret, unlike his other pranks which more directly involved his presence. He excelled in Biology class in school, even taking home the head of a baby pig that was used in class for his own purposes. He defleshed the head and kept the skull for his own collection, a practice that he would repeat with many of his human captives as an adult. Dahmer went to the prom with a girl with whom he was set up by some friends. He was known among his classmates for his excessive drinking... he would bring Scotch to class in a Thermos and drink heavily throughout the day to suppress his feelings. Dahmer was known to ask friends if he could put his head to their chest and listen to their heartbeat. It made him very excited to hear the sound of internal organs at work.
Dahmer was known as a prankster in school, but at home he was detached and unreceptive. His father recognized his body language in court as being the "passive mask" by which Dahmer hid his crimes throughout his life. When dealing with him, authorities and peers often felt sorry for the awkward and intelligent loner, and his excuses to cover up his deeds often contained enough truth to alleviate further questioning. Although Dahmer was certainly not "o.k.," those around him deeply wanted him to be, for their sake and their own. Once, later in their lives, when Dahmer's father was pressuring him to reveal the contents of a box with a human head inside, Dahmer swiftly deflected his father's attention by telling him that there was child pornography within. Betting on his father's unwillingness to deal with such potentially shocking matter, Dahmer promised to dispose of it and the contents went unseen by his father Lionel. The uncomfort and distance between the two men in that moment shows a great deal about the relationship between the two men. Jeffery and Lionel had a complex and emotional relationship, one that skirted around Dahmer's sexuality (a subject that Lionel was surprisingly accepting of). When his father's book about raising an infamous murderer was released to the public, Jeffery read it and asked his dad "Why didn't you mention any of the good stuff?"

"So I've made my mind up I must live my life alone, and though it's not the easy way I guess I've always known... I'd say goodbye to love."

When Dahmer was 18 years old, his parents divorced, leaving him and his brother David in the custody of their mother. Jeffery was abandoned by her at this same age in an incident that many court appointed psychologists identify as Dahmer's "breaking point." He was left by his own mother to fend for himself with no food or money, with his longsuffering parents finally annulling their bitter bonds of marriage. The world must have seemed a cold and lonely place to the boy, and it is around this time that he began to act on his predatory inclinations. The deep and overt religiosity of his youth corroded into what Dahmer would later describe as a scientific "atheism," a belief in there being no just punishment for bad deeds but simply a continuum of actions perpetrated by man upon the surrounding environment. This would be the rationale by which Dahmer would come to justify his crimes, as before his final arrest he seemed to view the world from the viewpoint that cunning and coldheartedness were the virtues that sustained one's existence rather than honor and empathy. Perhaps he learned it from his mother, who stayed surprisingly silent throughout much of the time of Dahmer's infamy. It was around this time, in the summer of 1978, that Dahmer committed his first murder, according to his testimony. He took home a long-haired hitchhiker with a dark complexion named Steven Hicks. Hicks was a year older than Dahmer, and his appearance on the side of the road wearing no shirt was too close to Dahmer's personal sexual fantasies to resist. Dahmer invited the young man home with him, promising that they could relax and enjoy some beer and marijuana back at Dahmer's place. They hung out for a while, and according to Dahmer's testimony it soon became apparent to Dahmer that the Hicks was not interested in a homosexual encounter with him. When Hicks went to leave, it was too much for Dahmer to bear, and he decided to act so that Steven Hicks could be the object of pleasure that Dahmer sought to turn him into. On the urging of his father, Dahmer had begun to lift weights around this time and had developed and toned his muscles. Lionel felt that urging the boy toward a hobby like lifting weights would push him to become a useful member of society rather than being a brooding teenager, and ironically it would be a hobby that would assist young Jeffery in becoming a more successful predator in what would become his overarchingly dominant passion and hobby in life. Back to the two young men in Dahmer's room, Hicks declared his intentions to leave and no sooner than as he was on his way to the door did the young Dahmer strike him several times over the head with a small barbell, ending Hicks' life in a brutal and unexpected fashion. When asked about his reasoning for this, Dahmer replied to investigators that he could think of no other way to make the boy stay other than ending his life. Now, for most well-adjusted people, the idea of being spurned by a potential romantic partner is not justification for homicide, but by Dahmer's rationale (factoring in his particular fetish for the entrails and internal organs of the dead) there was no way for him to have the romantic satisfaction that he was seeking other than murder. A doctor who investigated Dahmer to determine his sanity suggested that his fixation on internal organs may have arisen from youthful onanistic experiments involving animal entrails. As disgusting as that may be to the casual reader, it gets to the root of Dahmer's scientific examination of the organic form, where animals and humans are just machines that he seeks to find the working machinations of. In this way, Dahmer's scientific methods of cruelty are similar to that of infamous Nazi scientist Dr. Joseph "Angel Of Death" Mengele. In the truest sense, the homicidal actions of Jeffery Dahmer represent a combination of a deep and emotional yearning within all people combined with the cold disconnect of an atheistic scientific viewpoint (the viewpoint that Dahmer himself espoused at the time of his arrest and trial). The cold and unjudgemental hand of Western scientific experimentation (and accompanying methods of vivisection, dissection, and preservation), more so than any movie or book, had the most enormous influence on the actions of the shockingly antisocial actions of the young Jeffery Dahmer.

"What I've got they used to call the blues. Nothing is really wrong, feeling like I don't belong... Funny but it seems that it's the only thing to do, run and find the one who loves me..."

Everyone knows the feeling of disconnection and loneliness that defined Dahmer's life, and it is especially pronounced in suburban American life. The stilted conversations, the yearning attempt to connect, distance from family due to vast gaps in understanding, and the cold and defiant existential despair of domesticity, and attempts at companionship therein. Within these realities, we sometimes seek companionship, and other times revel in the supposed independence of being alone. Dahmer sought a manner of domestic companionship with an individual would would be able to literally share with him their insides, someone who could let him inside of their working network of body systems and still remain alive, a physical impossibility. Once the intestines and other inner parts are removed from an individual, the systems fail and disrupt at a most basic physical level. It was this urge to get inside of the being, to make love to creation, that was Dahmer's undoing. His regenerative sexual urge was oriented toward the insides of the human body, an uncommon impulse but one perhaps mandated by an offshoot of nature. It was within the world that we live in that Dahmer came to his conclusions of how he would make love to another person, and it is from this fact that his actions must be judged. Dahmer was not a biological abnormality, but in fact a person "super-adapted" to this culture and society, with a strong emotional intelligence that enabled him to get away with his crimes for years and years. He consistently got out of being discovered for his crimes by appearing to be a normal, innocuous but eccentric and law abiding citizen, always apologetic and willing to make amends for his misdeeds.

"I really fell out of line this time... I really missed the gate... It's going to take some time this time."

After making the realization that Hicks was dead, Dahmer did with the young man's corpse what he would do many more times throughout his life. The body was dismembered, and in what would become a chilling calling card throughout his career, the head was removed and kept for Dahmer's own personal collection. Dahmer, when possible, would keep the skulls of his victims, many of which made it into his permanent collection discovered by police. He would paint the skulls in order to make them appear more like items that could be purchased from a store, therefore allowing him to leave them around the house in potential sight of visitors. The stilted nature of being together with others in society, surrounded by their individual hopes and dreams, their thoughts that make them human. This correlation into the world with others was too much for Jeffery to bear. In his act of dehumanization, of immobilizing Hicks through death and utilizing his remains for his own personal pleasure, Dahmer entered into the adult phase of his life, where he would put into motion the activities that would create infamy and renown for the young man that far passed his time of death. Dahmer entered into adult society apparently impaired an inherent disconnect from his understanding of the unreality of his desires for murder, and the overbearing need to enact his fantasy world. His ability to justify the use of another person simply as a prop in his personal world of pleasure enacts the Hollywood fantasies that obsessed him of perfect men with perfect bodies. Dahmer wanted to consume and devour those men, and in the years to come this would be his life's work.

"What do you get when you fall in love? A guy with a pin to burst your bubble... That's what you get for all your trouble. I'll never fall in love again."

(Stay tuned... In the next episode, Dahmer exposes himself in public, joins the Army, gets born again, and gets a job at a chocolate factory... all in the next MY GOAT.)

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THE WALK-IN KILLER:
NIGHT PROWLER RICHARD RAMIREZ

"My mother and father used to take me to church in Mexico and Texas, were I used to live. The huge figures of saints and crucifixions. Religion played a big role in my life... I saw myself inside it. It became a part of everyday life. How I thought. How I felt. Later on, by my teenage years, it was all in conflict with me, and still is. You understand? Bad and good and everything I had learned about Satan and God... I believe in Satan. I believe evil is a force that is beyond us, and that we just have to invite him in, and he will (come in)." - Richard Ramirez, from an interview conducted in 1994

Richard Ramirez, self-proclaimed son of the Christian devil, is the rock star of the serial killer world. An unrepentant Satanist who murdered people at random and with a vicious efficiency and delivered with a rebellious panache. A petty criminal by instinct, Ramirez was born in Texas to a poor family. He was influenced at a very young age by his friendship with an older cousin Mike. Mike had just come back from Vietnam, where he served as a decorated soldier for the United States Army. He had a series of photographs from his times there, including a series of images of Mike in the process of raping a Vietnamese civilian. Richard was shown the photographs in consecutive order, fascinated at the visceral images in rapt attention. In the final image, Mike was fellating himself using the severed head of the same girl as a prop. He bragged about the murders and rapes that he had committed, proud of his extracurricular accomplishments and missing the freedom that he experienced while away at war. He taught Richard how to fire a gun, as well as the proper way to stab someone fatally. Mike was very eager to pass on the information that he had learned to his younger cousin. The photographs that were shown to Ramirez showed him possibilities of human behavior that were new but compelling to the boy. The fact that his cousin had photographic evidence of participating in such atrocities and was a war hero for his efforts was extremely inspirational to Ramirez. Not long after this incident, Ramirez was present for another important day in Mike's life. In the midst of a yelling argument, Mike pulled out a gun and shot his wife in the face. She fell on a bed where she bled to death. Mike told Richard to run before the cops arrived, telling him to tell no one what he saw. In an 1994 interview while incarcerated, Ramirez described returning to the room with his father and feeling a palpable presence of death, which he calls a "stillness." He was in awe of the presence of what had occurred, and the energy surrounding the idea of death was intoxicating in its power. His attraction to sexual violence was a fundamental part of his entry into manhood. He was nonetheless disturbed by the incident and started a pattern of truancy and drug use that would take him to the criminal stage of his life at an early age.

"I saw my cousin shoot his wife... I went back into the apartment to collect some things with my dad, because my cousin was in jail. The bed was all bloody. It was there where she had landed after the bullet. She got a .38 to the face. At the same time it was very... uh. The stillness of the room, the eerieness, you know. We had to open the windows to ventilate the room and it was something. It was... (long pause) ...it was death! I had known the woman. I had known her very well. I went into the living room and saw her purse. I looked through her purse, saw her ID cards and her things. It was a strange feeling. That was the first time I ever ran across death. Ever since, I was intrigued." - Ramirez, 1994

As a teenager Ramirez grew up to be a petty thief who got a thrill from breaking into people's houses. He was a fan of heavy metal music and in particular the Australian group AC/DC (whose name is a slang term for a bisexual person). He strongly identified with the lyrics written by original singer Bon Scott, including a track called "Night Prowler," which he had adopted as a personal anthem. The song described the activities that he was personally obsessed with, breaking and entering into people's houses. The thrill became something that he obsessed over, and after a stint in prison and encouragement from a roommate, Ramirez decided to fully embrace Satanism as his personal belief system. He was obviously influenced by literature such as the Satanic Bible as evidenced from his theatrical presentation of Satanism to the press, but deeper than that Ramirez seemed to believe in a deep personal connection with Satan that pushed him to dedicate his life to murder. He was not part of any sort of Satanic cult or coven, but an independant "self-styled" Satanist, to use terminology coined by the investigators of the case. Ramirez never ended up holding a legitimate job, and after being kicked out of his house at the age of 17, all Ramirez knew was a life of crime. He was looking at no future other than what he could take from others, and the idea of the murder that he had witnessed always stuck out in his mind. The stark power and reality of death had intoxicated Ramirez like a drug, and he wanted to devote himself to recreating that feeling over and over again. The idea of breaking into people's homes and disrupting their reverie, entering into that moment of infinite silence and unconsciousness to manifest as a living nightmare, became an addiction and way of life for Ramirez. Embodying the fear of the unknown, and dominating unsuspecting prey under the cover of sleep became a vocation for the young man, a reason to exist. In a period of several years he would escalate in his criminal activity to become one of the most notorious serial killers in America.

"Everyone must find out who they are and be aware of their actions before they wind up in a vicious predicament." - Ramirez, 1994

Recent forensic evidence has connected Ramirez to the killing of a nine year old girl in the San Francisco tenderloin district in April of 1984, which would have made her one of his very earliest victims. Although most of his murders occurred in the Los Angeles area, several killings in San Francisco have been associated with Ramirez as well, including the recently re-opened home invasion murder of a 66-year old man with the unusual name of Peter Pan. Two months later there was a home invasion of a lady in her late seventies that was the next step in his reign of terror, certainly showing that the man had no preference as far as age was concerned. He kidnapped two young girls on two separate occasions the following months, subjecting each one to a violent sexual encounter before dropping them back off at the park. A year later, he committed a home invasion and a murder in a public park consecutively within the same day, leaving behind a witness in the first instance. Police were told of a thin, curly haired Latino man with rotten teeth that became dubbed "The Walk-In Killer" in the early stages of the public awareness of Ramirez. His most commonly executed plan was to break into a home and shoot or otherwise incapacitate the male of the house, after which he would typically rape any present female and the kill her. He was known in several instances for leaving behind identifying carvings on the bodies, as well as in one instance drawing pentagrams on the walls. This has led the crimes to be dubbed as "Satanic" in nature, although they could also be seen in line with the terror actions shown to Ramirez of his brother and other soldiers in Vietnam, as well the tagging and graffitti culture of local gangs. Ramirez revelled in the terrifying nature of the crimes, and scenes that he left behind guaranteed notoriety for his actions as well as striking fear into the general public. He was able to commit his crimes and see the effects from afar as the media began to sensationalize the brutal and shocking murders. Ramirez would often re-enact the photograph of his cousin receiving fellatio with many of the female victims as part of his home invasion procedure, getting an erotic thrill from killing the male of the house and consummating his excitement with the nearest female. Although he repeated this specific scenario multiple times, he would shake the scenario up occasionally by abducting young girls or beating the elderly to death. Many of his victims (who were not woken up for sexual assault) were shot in their sleep. He was also known to rape his victims in multiple orifices during his sprees, usually making a specific point to violate the mouth and anus of his victims.

"In today's society, people use those qualities - I call them qualities - for all things. It is for self-gratification. It is for sex. It is for excitement. This kind of fervor servers it's own purpose. It doesn't obey rules. It runs amok. You see it on the news everyday, but society cannot hang it's moral and ethical values on me to survive. i do what I must in all ways, and I'm proud of it. The necessity to be myself passes all moral barriers." - Ramirez, 1994

Eventually the media wised up to Ramirez' nocturnal mode of operation and began to dub him the "Night Stalker." His methodology was most often to use a gun in his murders, but sometimes he would shake it up a bit with knives and blunt objects. He in particularly seemed fond of bludgeoning the elderly, and oddly many victims survived his attacks compared to most serial killers, for whom the act of facilitating death is the highlight of the killing process. The act of killing does not seem to excite Ramirez as much as the action of terrorizing his prey. In many ways, Ramirez was of the raping and pillaging colonialist mindset that created many nations, having within him a deep urge to take from others combined with a desire to spread his seed around Los Angeles. It seems possible that some of the women that were left alive after being raped were possibly left behind in hopes of being impregnated with Ramirez' seed. The fact that so many people were left behind from his attacks (including situations where there was a rape and robbery but no murder) shows that he was much more interested in terrorizing the living than killing and messing around with dead bodies, but he did leave behind ritualistically mutilated corpses behind several times for his own purposes. Several of the incidents involve odd details such as strange symbols carved into the bodies, or removal of eyes. The horrific and blatantly Satanic nature of his crimes both horrified news viewers and captured their attention. Never before had there been a serial murderer who so overtly flaunted the taboos of society and welcomed hatred from the public, revelling in a rebellious Satanic cloak of mystery. On an evening of action as the Night Stalker that would prove to be his last, Ramirez acted out his usual scenario, breaking into a house in the middle of the night and shooting the male of the household in his sleep. He then forced the man's newly widowed spouse to declare that she loves Satan while performing oral sex on Ramirez. He left her alive for some reason, and it was this mistake that led to his eventual identification. A vehicle that he had been using was found abandoned by police after positive identification from the witness left behind, and Ramirez' fingerprints quickly betrayed his identity. Within two days, his image, name, and information were on the front of every local newspaper and magazine. Abruptly interrupted while attempting a carjacking, Ramirez was identified by an angry group of civilians who attempted to beat him to death. He was actually saved by the police in this instance from death by the raging mob.

"It's all a bloodlust. When the state comes to execute a man, they laugh. So do I." - Ramirez, 1994

During his trial, Ramirez put forth an intensely evil image to the press and public at large, making cryptic comments to the press and cheerily posing for photographs displaying a pentagram drawn on the palm of his hand. He told the court and reporters that he was the Son of Satan, and that he was protected by his dark father. There was much talk at one point in the trial about a threat that Ramirez had supposedly made about shooting the prosecuting attorney, which caused metal detectors to be installed in the courtroom. This was to no avail for one juror, who was shot to death in her apartment by a boyfriend who later committed suicide. Although not related to Ramirez, the murder/suicide in the midst of the trial unnerved much of the jury and added an eerie mood around Ramirez, who seemed to have caused the violence from his captivity. Ramirez was sentenced to death in 1989, but is still alive and well and in fact has since wed part-time Teen Magazine editor Doreen Lioy. Their wedding ceremony occurred in the main meeting area of San Quentin Prison, while other prisoners and their families looked on during their visiting times with one another. She believes him to be innocent of the crimes that he was accused of, and says that she will commit suicide on the day of Ramirez's execution. The Night Stalker and his murders represent a certain strain of completely antisocial rebellion that is both overtly unwelcome yet secretly greasing the wheels of our society. He is an individual who was born with the disposition of a murderer and rapist, someone put on the Earth in order to act out our deepest fears, our most horrible fantasies about what kinds of monsters can be lurking in the darkness just out of sight. An odd kind of gardener, he picks and prunes away those that stick out to him, with a cold and relentless and peculiarly American precision.

"Big deal. Death always went with the territory. I'll see you at Disneyland." - Ramirez to reporters, upon news of being sentenced to the death penalty.

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THE CONNECTICUT HOME INVASION MURDERS -

"The death of non-combatants in battle, are (unfortunate casualties) collateral damage, the cost of victory. In the criminal underworld, you dehumanize the victim into terms of 'it's just business.'"- Joshua Komisarjevsky, from his journal regarding the Connecticut Home Invasion Murders.

The hammer of violent crime seems to strike randomly, in a blind fury. Perhaps there is some strange psychic attraction that magnetizes some individuals to winning the unfortunate lottery of violent assault by a stranger. A black hole opens up into the world of people who spend their lives as basically non-violent, law abiding citizens and an outside element of chaos that breaks the calm like a fist shattering glass. It can happen to anyone, and one's character is revealed by one's response to such an extreme circumstance. The metaphysical situation comedy lifestyle is disrupted and the reality of the hungry and poor waiting outside the gate becomes readily apparent. On July 23, 2007 two men who met at a halfway house for drug and alcohol abuse decided to break into the home of a wealthy Connecticut family with the intention of stealing money and fleeing the scene. They would leave the scene penniless from the back of a police car, leaving behind three dead and a house in ruins. The actions occurred because the two men were bored and tired of their life of poverty. The older of the two men, Steven Hayes (referred to as "Steeve" in the testimony of his partner), is an ogre-like man with a cold and indifferent stare who looks like he could have stepped out of a gangster flick opposite James Cagney. The younger of the two, born in 1980, was Joshua Komisarjevsky, an aimless youth with an intense and surprising self-awareness regarding the crimes as evidenced by his written testimony. The ill-fated family was headed by endocrinologist father William Petit and his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit. They had two lovely and well-adjusted daughters named Hayley (age 17) and Michaela (age 11). None of the members of the household survived the experience except for Mr. Petit.

"Aggression is the language of the criminal mind... momentum is everything, once lost you find another target, someone more submissive... The scream the welled up from the sounding chamber of his gaping mouth came from beyond the deepest sub-cellars of the human soul. A haunting sound so damningly maddening it had to be silenced... I had crossed life's bridge of dark ageless depravity, awakening the shadow repressed within. A look of stunned shock in his eyes... Steeve knocked on the window to my right, pulling me back to the moment where time had meaning and was of the essence."

It is not an uncommon thing on this planet for marauders to invade one's home and do what they will with you and your possessions. One of the reasons that we as a nation have an amendment to the constitution preserving our right to bear arms is because of this fact. In our nascent republic, the threat of foreign soldiers coming to bother us in our homes (or domestic persons both native and immigrant for that matter) was present enough to make the right to bear arms an inalienable right of all Americans. With the declining economy, as well as an increase in the gap between the poor and the well-salaried, robbery-based home invasions have made a resurgence in America. Komisarjevsky and Hayes are an unlikely pair, a sensitive-looking thin college type and a blue-collar shlub with a yearning for violent action. the day before carrying out the act, Komisarjevsky monitored Mrs. Hawke-Petit as she made a routine grocery trip with her daughter Michaela. She was selected for robbery solely on the basis of her appearance and the fact that she was driving a nice car.
Following her from the parking lot of the store, the two men scoped out her house and determined the best course of action by which to siege the house. The men claim that they were interested solely in robbery, but the randomness of the choice of victims is odd in contrast to how well organized the rest of the operation was. In Jennifer and Michaela, the two men had no particular reason to believe that there was any garunteed financial gain, but it is very telling that within twenty-four hours both females would be sexually abused and murdered by the duo. Hayes and Komisarjevsky texted each other enthusiastically before the crime, Hayes in particular insisting that he is ready for "action." Komisarjevsky put his child to bed and the two began to monitor the house from down the street, spending hours watching the family as they went to bed in preparation of entering the house. The two young girls prepared themselves for bed, having no idea that tomorrow would be the last morning that they would ever wake up. After hours of waiting, the two entered into the house in the early morning, expecting all of the members of the family to be asleep. However, to their surprise Mr. Petit was asleep on a couch in the downstairs area, and after waking him they needed to act quickly. Joshua Komisarjevsky took a baseball bat from nearby and struck Mr. Petit with it violently. The two were momentarily stunned at the young man's sudden and violent action, and feeling as if he had no other choice he began to pummel the man with the baseball bat until he passed out bleeding onto the floor and the screaming stopped.
In his journals, Joshua describes this act of violence as if it were akin to a supernatural experience, a realization of his connection with something greater than him. According to the two, there was blood everywhere and Mr. Petit was to be brought inside. The daughters were woken and tied up, and the two demanded money from the Petits. There was not enough money in the house to satisfy the pair, and in what would prove to be a fatal move they waited at the house until sunrise for Mrs. Hawke-Petit to go to the bank and withdraw more funds. Mrs. Hawke-Petit told the bank teller what was happening, asking her to call 911, and it was actually bank authorities who called the police to warn them of the home invasion in progress. With the house surrounded by police, things escalated quickly.

"Moments of extreme stress bring out one's character in it's purest form... Hayley was a fighter... she continually tried time and time again to free herself and reach help for her family. Michaela's calm strength and poised emotion gave her an aura of fearlessness... I have tasted, seen, and felt that this pain exists externally... When Steeve took the life of Mrs. Petit he brought both of us to a whole different level..."

Hayes had purchased gasoline in preparation of burning down the house after the robbery. This indicates that they did not want there to be any survivors left behind to tell the tale of what had happened. With Mr. Petit beaten senseless and curled up on the couch (pretending to be unconscious, according to Komisarjevsky), Steven Hayes raped Mrs. Hawke-Petit and strangled her to death. Mr. Petit was within earshot and heard the entire event occurring, hearing his wife's screams and moans as she was raped by Hayes and then brutally suffocated, only running for his own safety once he was convinced that he could run out of the house safely. Komisarjevsky claims that the man was aware of the entire event occurring but did not act out of fear for his own safety. Joshua Komisarjevsky at this point entered the room of the younger daughter. After pulling the lower half of her body off the bed that she was tied to, Komisarjevsky brought himself to orgasm using her, an act which he apparently photographed on his cellular phone. He was overheard in court saying to someone that he had thought that she was at least 14. Joshua and Steven then began to douse the still-alive girls with gasoline (as well as the dead body of their mother), setting fire to their rooms and turning the house into a tomb for all three women. According to forensic specialists, both girls died from smoke inhalation while tied to their beds. It was somewhere around the time that the two men were setting the fire that Mr. Petit had escaped the house and managed to contact the police, who were unable to put out the fire themselves and to apparently add comic relief to the situation attempted to do so with a garden hose.

"With death's rattle rhythm beating time in my head, I ran that police blockade at full speed, hurtling myself at death. I was subsequently cheated of my retribution to Steeve and my own escape through death's embrace everlasting. Through it all I was given a new clarity... I was suddenly acutely cognizent of a seething cauldron of disconnected rage lying in wait behind my sorrow."

Komisarjevsky and Hayes attempted to escape the scene by bursting out of the driveway in the family car. They immediately collided with a police barricade, with Komisarjevsky hoping that the crash would kill him and his partner. They survived to be put on trial, with the broken shell of Dr. Petit as the sole witness to their sole home invasion attempt. Hayes has been sentenced to death, and Joshua will likely receive a similar fate.

"I am a part of our society... a reminder how quickly things can go out of control outside the restraint of accepted social behavior... No one was supposed to lose their lives, but I'm not surprised by the end result of human depravity."

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VIOLENT VISIONS
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PSYCHO 2
Meg Tilly looks beautiful and gives and extremely affecting performance in Psycho 2, the sequel that took an entire generation of successful horror films to spawn. In this one, Hotel Owner and split personality killer Norman Bates (based by original "Psycho" writer Robert Bloch on the real life mother-obsessed murderer Ed Gein) is subjected to the kindness of a visitor who enters into his life after his release from incarceration. He has been haunted still by the demons of his past, both caused by his dead mother and himself. Meg Tilly's character arrives into his life to perhaps offer kindness and some sort of salvation, but she proves to be an enabler who falls into a bizarre ruse and becomes accused of Bates' recent murders in an unconvincing twist ending.

Tilly's performance as a young woman who sees the beauty in Norman Bates is exceptional. Her facial expressions and sweet demeanor show an honest sympathy for an outcast, and Bates is excellently personified by Anthony Perkins, who would go on to direct the next sequel in the series. The film seems more influenced by those inspired by Hitchcock than Alfred himself, having colorful and surrealistic feel reminiscent of the work of Dario Argento and other giallo filmmakers. Watching it I wonder how a film such as this would appear to someone sharing the compulsions displayed onscreen by Norman, someone hiding a similar lifestyle of bloodlust hidden behind closed doors. Although the supervillian-esque figure of Hannibal Lecter has aged badly and appears more unrealistic as time goes on, in Norman Bates a very effective depiction of schizophrenic madness is portrayed, thanks to Bloch's characterization and Perkins' fine performance.

In the era of the slasher film, making a sequel to the one that started it all seems like an inevitability. However, "Psycho 2" does not fit comfortably within the paradigm of the slasher and instead chooses to embrace an exploration of the psychosexual and family issues brought up in the first movie. Bates becomes a symbol of a disconnect from the family and a wandering impulse within America, a loneliness that has grown in the time since it stopped being safe to hitchhike or talk to strangers. With the relationship between Bates and those around him, it maintains a distance from him as an "other" who inevitably will hurt those around him, the eternal black sheep of the family. Now that the original film is having its' 50th anniversary, the sequels have been popping up on the radar as well, and this one is by far one of the best despite some preposterous elements in the convoluted ending. A cold and chillingly existential drama about people who can't fit in, and urges that cannot be suppressed.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

Standard Operating Procedure is a documentary made by Errol Morris. Although it purports to be about the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq, it is more of a documentary of the thousands of photos of prisoner abuse and dehumanization that the facility became known for. At a prison facility staffed mostly by young people, a mustachioed officer (under the direction of advice from Generals and other military authorities, including people from the Central Intelligence Agency) created a systemized method of dehumanization of prisoners under the auspices of finding information. This documentary attempts to present a factual and unbiased depiction of the events in question, but leaves the viewer with a multitude of questions.

The talking heads that we spend much of the film observing are unquestionably traumatized to varying degrees by the events at Abu Ghraib, with the exception of a few who seem not to have actually been there. An African-American officer who appeared in many of the graphic abuse photographs gives an affecting testimony about the horrors of war, putting a human face on a person who was demonized by the American media during the time that these photos were initially being released to the public. The most fascinating interview footage is of the beautiful and weathered Lynndie England, the face of some of the most sensationalized photographs that emerged from the incident. Much of the running time of the film is wasted on cheesy re-enactments of the events, narrated by people of varying reputability who stare directly into the camera as they speak. The overall effect of the film is some sort of mind control program, but it is not discernable as to whether it wishes the viewer to embrace the military or reject the allure of firing off rounds at people in the desert who look like tiny ants coming toward you.

There are stories that are told by people who were at Abu Ghraib of entire towns of people kidnapped in the night and taken in for questioning. All of the men in a village, regardless of political affiliation. They took the men, likely most of them innocent of any affiliation with terrorists, and stripped them naked. They forced the men to simulate sex acts on one another, seemingly only for the purpose of taking photographs. Some of the images that resulted from the event resemble the Pier Paolo Pasolini film "Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom." The film was a parody of fascism, depicting Italian fascist leaders stacking up young men and women naked in order to judge their worth based on the attractiveness of their derrieres. Leave it to the United States to actually act out this scene in a series of photographs staged by members of our military force. Although a small group of young recruits took the fall for the events that occurred in these images, the perpetrators who orders were being followed go unpunished. The point of the story seems to be that the only crime that was committed by anyone was being in a photograph where abuse was taking place.

Men were forced to endure loud music, spending all of their time wearing womens undergarments on their head and genital areas and harassed with dogs. People were beaten, and famously a man constantly smashed his head against the wall in torment, leaving blood splattered across a door of the facility. Many of the photographs show graphic images of bloodstains where bleeding and tortured prisoners were dragged across the ground, leaving behind images more reminiscent of a "Hostel" sequel than an official United States military facility. The overall consensus of the employees seems to be that this type of scenario was inevitable due to the barbarism of the combatants, the logic of this seeming to suggest that in order to battle depravity one must become even more depraved. In reality, it was simply an excuse for a living and breathing hell on earth, a corporeal enactment of the horrors depicted by Bosch in the sinister panel of his "Garden Of Earthly Delights."

The man who stood on a box with a bag over his head, hooked up to wires is discussed. The famous image of the hooded prisoner in a Christ-like pose became the defining image left behind in the media coverage of the event. According to one of the soldiers, he brought his own box and seemed to have a great time taking the photographs. More exciting than the circus coming to town, Abu Ghraib is presented here as just a way to pass the time in a world with no truth except power. A soulless, life-crushing, and depressing documentary and event, signalling the United States' move away from being a beacon of Democracy and dignity for all into a Roman decline into indulgence without care or sympathy for others. Abu Ghraib was a black mark on America that should no be swept under the rug with the blame placed on scapegoats, but instead observed and taken into consideration as an example of a systematic corruption within the aims of
our civilization.

Comments? Questions? Direct them toward Joseph Gates - harshhumanignorance@gmail.com

2011-09-11T20:46:00.000-07:00

MY GOAT #2
TRUE CRIME EDITION
PART ONE
THE SMELL OF EASY PREY

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THE RAPE, MURDER, AND DISPOSAL OF CHANNON CHRISTIAN - One of the most shocking crimes of the past decade has received little to no coverage from mainstream media outlets. Information regarding the crime on the web is wrought with half-truth and deception. Much of this is due to an intense veil of secrecy that the Knoxville Police Department kept over details until recently, leading up to the forensic revelations uncovered during the trial. From those trials, however, came the shocking details of an orgy of rape and violence that descended upon a young causasian couple perpetrated by small group of previously petty criminals who were motivated by cruelty and sadism. The details are as such: a young blonde, white college student and her also white boyfriend are carjacked in their jeep by a group of black youths. The desire for the jeep was used later as the motive for the crime, a motive that is entirely laughable due to the fact that it was almost instantly disposed of by the kidnappers. The prison mentality of the kidnappers leads quickly to the brutal rape (not only by genetalia of the males involved but also by inanimate objects employed by the attackers) and murder (shot in the back of the head) of Channon's boyfriend, who was executed in the most cowardly manner possible while bound like an animal primed for slaughter, unable to defend himself. His body is then set on fire in a pathetic attempt to cover up the deed and left out by train tracks, soon to be discovered by a shocked rail line worker going about his duties.
Back at Channon's home, her parents were alarmed when their daughter did not return in time and did not respond to telephone calls. After contacting authorities in law enforcement, as well as the family cell phone provider, the jeep was quickly located before the next day was over. Evidence within the jeep eventually led police to the house of one of the "carjackers", where Channon's body discovered. The girl had been kept tied up like property, repeatedly raped and terrorized by multiple assailants over the course of several days. According to the testimony of one of the kidnappers (in fact, the person in whose name the house was under), she repeatedly begged to not be killed, offering the kidnappers anything that they wanted from her as she pleaded for her life. During this time, a steady stream of human traffic was flowing in and out of the house, due to one of the perpetrators burgeoning drug business. Theoretically, some of these people could have participated in the torture or at the very least had some sort of inkling of knowledge regarding the fact that a human being was held captive within the house held captive to be tortured and abused. Eventually, some chemical substances (including bleach) were poured down her throat and onto her genital area. After this, she was bound further, wrapped up tightly inside of a trash bag (so tightly in fact that her knees were touching her chin). It was in a garbage bag in the kitchen that forensic experts have determined that she suffocated to death.
The burned and abused body of her boyfriend had also been discovered by this time, and the perpetrators of the crime were quickly scrambling to hide. Not only were many people within the local community where the crimes occurred aware that such a heinous crime had happened within the house, but in addition to this the suspected perpetrators were eagerly guarded by the local community from the police. Each suspect in the case gives an account where they themselves are blameless, simply doing things that come natural (such as rape, and the intimidation of others), but all stopping short of murder, in complete denial of their complicity in the killings themselves and pushing off the responsibility on "someone else." The coldness of the perpetrators and the lack of empathy that they had for taking the life of another human being is congruent to the attitude necessary for systematic cruelty perpetrated by the United States Army on helpless civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The overall dehumanization of the white couple on the part of the perpetrators and those around them shows a general disregard for the humanity of the two people involved in the situation, possibly even to the point of imagining the white victims as another species from that of the perpetrators. They were raped and destroyed in the manner of enemy combatants decimated by an invading force.
Not that there is not an historical precedent for this in the deep South. In the days of slavery, it was not uncommon for acts of cruelty, rape, and complete dehumanization (such as the stuffing of disobedient slaves into a cooking pot) to be perpetrated by white slave-owners onto their black "property." The manner in which these two young people were kept and held as property certainly recalls that of the slave era, as well as images and stories of the torture and sexual abuse that occurred in Abu Ghraib (perpetrated by US soldiers who were not much different in age than Channon and her boyfriend). The animalistic and disturbed mentality of the perpetrators is shocking indeed, but it reflects with a bright intensity the intentions and inclinations, the values and ethics of our nation in the current post-"War On Terror" climate. There was a time when the United States was a nation who got things done with firepower and hard work, and when the idea of torture was considered unethical by the average supporter of the US military. Torture used to be something that was done to our soldiers by other nations, not a justifiable means to gaining information or advantage over others. It was something done by Vietnamese Communists and Spanish Inquisitors, not members of the United States fighting forces. The justification and implementation of torture and intentionally-terrifying sadism on enemy combatants in the name of defending our nation from the events and perpetrators of what occurred on 9/11 has done nothing but drag this country and its citizens into the degradation of the so-called "third world." The horrific acts that were perpetrated on Channon and her boyfriend were not simply random acts of depravity but in fact a reflection of a cultural imperative that has been building up for the past ten years.
The reasoning and motivations of those involved has been the most puzzling factor, as the politically-minded trip over themselves to assert that there is no possibly way that the crime could have been racially motivated. On the side of White Supremacists and the extreme right wing, you have those calling to make an example out of these youths of an underlying plague of horrific illiteracy and violence in the ghettos of American society. The politicization of this case by white power groups has caused many to discard the horrifying facts relating to the story, making it easier to push it out of their mind in favor of more palatable news items. Absurd claims and speculations have been made from supposedly African-American-aimed websites (such as Svengali Media) that the couple was "asking for it" and that they got what they deserve for hanging out in a "bad area." If it is true that white people should not be in certain parts of town because they will be murdered (or worse) simply because of their race, then this situation constitutes the very definition of racially motivated violence. Quoted from the Svengali Media website: “Privileged whites deserve to feel and know our experiences and values firsthand and not just from word of mouth or by books and movies. Their families need and deserve to have terrible memories & experiences with blacks.” This sort of attitude, although not overtly espoused by the perpetrators of the crime, shows very clearly a cultural impetus which would lead to a group of black youths deciding to dehumanize and degrade a pair of whites in such an extreme manner.
The truth of the matter is that the perpetrators of the crime, regardless of race, are subliterate, animalistic people who live that the absolute margins of polite society. The prison mentality that is created by the cultural and economic situation that many grow up with in the ghettos of America is spreading rapidly across the United States as economic woes and industrial blight grow. The young people in poverty grow up with a kill or be killed mentality... without a chance for sensitivity and kindness to develop at a young age, the human becomes a scarred and calloused individual who cares not for the emotions of others, existing only to satify a base impulse. The complete dehumanization of the victim in the situation represents a desire for the perpetrator to act out a self-loathing against any sensitivity or weakness within oneself, passing it off on the crumpled body of the other who lay before them. The impulses that were given into in order for this situation to occur are in the back of the human mind at all times. When degraded by poverty and ignorance, the human being proves to be by far the most depraved animal.

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THE DEATH OF JONBENET RAMSEY - "The Ramsey's home, which had a red brick Tudor facade, contained 6,866 square feet of living space, and nearly filled a half-acre lot. There was no fence surrounding the property. The front of the house was built in 1927, and the rear was added later and had been remodeled several times over the years. A back elevator had been replaced with a spiral staircase when the Ramseys renovated the house in 1992. The floor plan was a maze, and the decorating was unusual; flowered carpets, thick white moldings, vivid colors."

"JonBenet's closet was stuffed with clothes. A small TV set with a built-in VCR sat on a shelf inside her closet. Other shelves had dozens of cartoon and Shirley Temple videos. To the right of the closet stood a pageant trophy as tall as the light switch. Another trophy was even taller. There was a floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree in the room..." - Lawrence Schiller, "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town."

Likely one of the most heavily reported and least understood murder cases of the 1990s, widespread speculation has emerged from the miasma of confusion surrounding the events that took place in the Ramsey home on December 25th, 1996. The facts of the case have been repeated ad infinitum in media outlets both legitimate and clandestine. The affluent and well-respected family had attended a Christmas party at their friends the Whites on the night in question, and according to the family they quickly went to bed and not a creature was stirring throughout the house. Except, of course, for someone who had caused the young girl to make a loud scream in the night (at around 2:00 A.M.) that was reported separately by several of the Ramsey's neighbors. Morning arrives, and upon discovering a "ransom note" (an oddly worded piece of literature that shows strong evidence of being written by Jonbenet's mother Patsy Ramsey... even Patsy's own mother stated that the handwriting matched that of Patsy), the family contacted authorities and several family friends. Although the note expressly forbade the Ramseys from contacting the police, to do so was their immediate reaction, which has puzzled some researchers. As the police made their way around the house, early in the morning John Ramsey and his friend Fleet White searched the basement, which was possibly the second time that morning that Ramsey had been down there (according to investigators on the scene). At around 1:00 PM, while police were sectioning off Jonbenet's room for clues left behind by the kidnapper, an officer suggested to the nervous and pacing John Ramsey to search the house and look for clues possibly left behind by the kidnappers. John went straight to the basement, very quickly finding Jonbenet's body behind a small door with a wooden handle in the wine cellar. Her hands were bound above her head and tied to a wooden garrote, with a cord wrapped around her neck. The nylon rope used to tie her up was purchased from a hardware store several days before with Patsy Ramsey's American Express card. Someone had drawn a small red heart on the girl's wrist and wrapped her in her special blanket (an oddly maternal touch to such a brutal crime scene). The blanket had on it pubic hair not belonging to any family member. The girl's mouth was covered with duct tape in the same manner as little Caylee Anthony, the murdered child who would capture the nation's imagination over ten years later. Although the Ramsey's were spared the oddly specific $118,000 expense being asked by the supposed kidnappers (and incidentally $118,000 happened to be the exact amount of Mr. Ramsey's awarded bonus from work that year), their daughter was no longer going to be celebrating any future Christmases in the Ramsey household. John Ramsey carried the body upstairs, uttering "My baby, my little angel" over and over again. Patsy made her way over to the body and began to embrace it, shocked and under deep scrutiny from the observing officers. The police who were present immediately called for backup, declaring a "Code Black" (police code for murder). One of John Ramsey's first reactions to finding the body is to quickly dial his pilot and inform him to prepare his plane for Atlanta, and upon hearing this, the police told Ramsey that he will not be allowed to leave the state. Despite the house being surrounded by snowfall, there were no footprints to be found to indicate the presence of an intruder, leadomg police to suspect the murderer as being possibly aided someone from within the family, if not a person within the household. Although the police sectioned off the little girls bedroom looking for signs of the intruder, the Ramseys and their friends were allowed to roam the house freely, possibly tampering with a multitude of pieces of evidence. The Ramsey parents refused interviews with the police and even denied them the ability to turn over phone records with a self-righteous indignence, actions that would land less wealthy people in jail.

“(The case is that of) a child’s murder with ritualistic overtones. Mrs. Ramsey’s motives and post incident actions cannot be understood with rational thought. This crime was committed by a delusional individual who has convinced herself of her own innocence. Sociopaths always view their violent actions as justified. When a divine intervention is added to this justification pathology, you have a highly volatile individual... We believe that Patsy Ramsey is a delusional sociopath. Based on our experience with religious sociopaths, we believe that she saw JonBenet’s death as a sacrifice for sins she had committed.” - from the case profile by private firm SARAPH, INC. given to Boulder, Colorado police in 1998

At this point the cynical mind kicks in and, pointing to the evidence, wishes to openly declare the guilt as obviously existing between the parents. However on the body of the little girl was evidence of sexual abuse (going back further than the night in question, in fact), and disturbingly there was DNA left behind on her clothing by a person who was not a member of the Ramsey family. So either someone was allowed into the house who sexually molested her, or she was brought to someone who was performing these activities with her. Many investigators find it strange that immediately after the police were contacted, two sets of close family friends were called to arrive on the scene at around 5:50 in the morning to coincide with the arrival of the police. Regardless of how close of friends the Ramseys were with the White or Fernie families, the presence of those people simply acted to confuse and disturb the police investigation, ultimately acting as a contributor to the multitude of disruptions and tampering of evidence that the Ramsey family seems to have orchestrated on the morning after Christmas 1996. The little girl had been a prized possession of the Ramsey's throughout her short life, dressed in alluring clothes and made to perform routines at "beauty contests" from a very young age. The photographs and videos of these events inundated the public in the reporting of the case that enveloped the media in early 1997, becoming a pornographic language of death and child sexuality eagerly eaten up by the late Clinton-era American public. Patsy herself was brought up within the pageant system from a very young age. In fact, in a review of one of her performances a commentator described her as a "little automaton." According to a family friend Pam Griffin, who made many of the costumes that the little girl wore at pageants, a distraught and tranquilized Patsy made some disturbing comments to her just two days after the murder. Patsy reached to Pam's face and deliriously asked "Couldn't you fix this for me? ...We didn't mean for this to happen."

"Evil on this scale is impossible to comprehend. To know who murdered JonBenét Ramsey is to know what world we live in, where we are." - James R. Gaines, former managing editor, Time Magazine, January 20, 1997 issue

THE LOOK OF LOVE

Patsy Ramsey was an Evangelical Christian. She experienced a bout with cancer before the death of her daughter that had her in the hospital for an extended time (almost ten years later, she would die from ovarian cancer, in June of 2006). During this time she availed herself of much Evangelical Christian literature relating to healing and dealing with internal pain through the healing powers of Jesus Christ and related scripture. In particular this literature dealt with a concept of Christ's victory over human death and suffering by his death on the cross. This is referred to in evangelical literature with an acronym: S.B.T.C. or "Saved By The Cross." Jesus' "victory" over suffering through his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection not only promises to heal the "saved" of their suffering but also heal them of their sins. In fact, the basic principal of the Evangelical literature that Ramsey was reading is based around an Old Testament concept that those who gravitate toward religious literature are saved already ahead of time by God, and that they must only "accept Jesus Christ into their heart as their personal saviour" in order to avoid punishment and suffering in this life and the next. Back to the ransom note: the note begins by claiming the "kidnappers" (an absurd concept once we know that the child is already dead in the wine cellar) are from a "small foreign faction." A movie about kidnappers working for a similar type of organization aired on local Boulder television earlier that night. Other parts of the note relating to other aspects of the delivery of the money are cliches straight out of Dirty Harry, which aired on television just a month previously. The clincher to this all is that the bottom of the note was signed with the phrase "S.B.T.C." followed by the word "Victory."

"The Lord is God, and he has made his light shine upon us. With boughs in hand, bind the festal sacrifice with ropes to the horns of the altar." - Psalm 118, verse 27

According to the Bible, in the days of Abraham a sacrifice was necessary for the Hebrew people to appease God. This meant binding a living creature with cords and slaughtering them on an altar, allowing the blood to be spilled for the consumption of a caring and loving God. Famously, Abraham (father of all Hebrew people) himself was asked by God personally to murder his own son Isaac as a sacrifice to the lord, stopping short just at the final moment to inform old Abe that he had won a special loyalty prize and that he could let his son go. Later in the next section of that same book, God theoretically sent his own son to the Earth to be killed by other people. Catholics and many other Christians believe that this sacrifice supercedes the need to offer animal sacrifice to God, and that Jesus acts as an intercession between humanity and God for this purpose. However, the notion of sacrifice and "longsuffering" are noted as virtues in all variations of Christianity, and Evangelical sects often meditate on the concept of blood sacrifice, using the death of Christ to illustrate this, referring to him as the "lamb of God." This becomes, for the believer, a deeply positive connection with the concepts of suffering and human sacrifice. In this way, Christianity is a blood sacrifice religion that meditates on the concept as a main theme of the religion, but does not overtly condone such activity "in the flesh" since God himself made the "ultimate sacrifice" in the form of his "only begotten son."

""Despite all the talk of an intruder in the district, I was never afraid for my own kids. You can put all the 'spin' on it you want, but if an 'intruder' came into my home, and a scream of that nature was heard by several of the neighbors, I'm responsible for the death of my child. Period." - Scott Gibbons, neighbor of the Ramsey family.

There are reports that little Jonbenet, shortly before her death, complained of robed figures hurting her in the dark, similar to descriptions that other children have made in the past alleging of what is commonly referred to as "Satanic Ritual Abuse" (see FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME FOUNDATION below). Indeed, her body showed signs of sexual trauma that occurred before the murder. Oddly, after the little girl was killed, someone continued to abuse her body with one of Patsy Ramsey's paintbrushes, which was identified by forensic scientists. An attorney in Boulder came to the District Attorney on the case with a witness from California that had some very unusual allegations. She told the authorities, in particular D.A. Alex Hunter, that she had been part of a multi-generational sex ring from the time that she was a young girl. She said that the markings and injuries on Jonbenet were consistent with sexual asphyxiation techniques that she was forced to go through by high-ranking businessmen not unlike Mr. Ramsey. She said that she was trained to dress provacatively and make seductive movements not unlike the young Jonbenet. In fact, Christmas night was one of the nights that the parties would occur where she was used for these sorts of purposes. In addition to this, she said that Fleet White Sr. (father of John Ramsey's friend Fleet White) was her mother's godfather, and the White family was closely tied in with her own. The timing of the situation and the relation to the White family was not lost on Hunter, who began to investigate these leads but then quickly and abruptly ended up resigning from his post. Fleet White himself, in the end, was found to be not be a DNA match to that evidence found on the young girl's body. Both of the adult Ramsey parents were very well-connected people, John Ramsey having a business purchased by Lockheed Martin and Patsy Ramsey's father was an engineer for Union Carbide, so the association with another prominent family across the country was not out of the question. Patsy Ramsey herself experienced the is now with her maker and savior, having passed away in 2006. Mr. Ramsey, who lived in Atlanta during the years of the Atlanta Child Murders, is now dating the mother of former Aruba tourist Natalee Holloway.

THE LAST BULB ON THE CHRISTMAS TREE

To imagine what happened that night in the darkness is to enter into the realms of obsession where the polite mind does not often willingly go. The time between 1:30 and 4:00 AM is a time when the restless are awake, a prime time for occurrences of murder and other antisocial acts committed out of the view of sunlight. In the darkness, late in the night, as the Ramseys claimed to all be sleeping, Jonbenet was taken from her bed by someone who we can determine was definitely not Santa Claus or one of his elves. Her little head is bludgeoned in a severely painful traumatic instant, likely leading to the scream that was reported by neighbors. In the darkness, as someone carried her past the lights of the still-glowing Christmas tree, through the house she was taken to the wine cellar, where she would have her final resting place behind a small door, covered from the cold by her favorite blanket. The girl had been experiencing night traumas for some time leading up until her death, causing her to have documented bladder control issues, as well as expressing fear in private to adults in her life. What we as the public see in the videos and photographs of the tiny girl singing and dancing is a very stilted and trained young person who is trapped in a world beyond her understanding. It is apparent that one way or another the girl was enduring disturbing events in her own life, the extent of which is possibly detailed in the testimony of what sounds like a rather valuable witness, the lady from California who was alleging of experiencing systemized abuse at the hands of a family connected to friends of the Ramseys. The District Attorney Hunter deemed her an "extremely credible" witness due to her lucidity and access to facts, but she never made it to a courtroom, since no one was put on trial for these murders. With such depravities present in the world, it is no surprise that someone might conclude that this little angel would be better off in Heaven with God.

"There is a killer on the loose... I don't know who it is, I don't know if it's a he or a she, but if I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep... to keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there." - Patsy Ramsey, interviewed on CNN shortly after the discovery of her daughter's body in her basement wine cellar.

(Respect and thanks must be given to Vincent Bridges & Jay Weidner for their valuable research on this topic)

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JONESTOWN - "...A wagon consists of a collection of wheels, spokes, a pole and so forth... (a) house consists of a frame made of beams, of rafters, of a roof and so forth. But the wagon in itself, the house in itself, where are they? In the same way, if from a man you take away the physical form, sensation, perception, mental activity and consciousness, what remains? Where will you find the man existing in himself outside the corporality and mentality?" - Alexandra David Neel and Lama Yongden, from "The Secret Oral Teachings In Tibetan Bhuddist Sects"

Although widely remembered as a mass suicide, the deaths that occurred on November 18, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana were a part of the largest concentration of murdered American citizens until the events of September 11, 2001. There is a famous image of Jim Jones wearing his priestly robe, surrounded by eleven children... of those eleven children, eight were killed on that day. Initial reports were disseminated in the American press that the large group of people all committed suicide from drinking poisoned Kool-Aid (it was actually Flavor-Ade), for purposes of escaping the sinful world that they were born into. It was an amazingly diverse cross-section of people involved in the conspiracy of "suicide," with a large amount of African-American members of the congregation and many elderly constituents. They were all members of The People's Temple, a Christian Socialist church that resided in Ukiah, California until it's leader, Jim Jones, decided to move the entire operation to the South American country of Guyana. The church members regularly visited San Francisco to court for new recruits, not unlike other nascent cult organizations such as the recently developed Hare Krishna movement. The new church members would be picked up in a large bus and brought to the grounds, where a socialist-oriented lifestyle of prayer, hard work, and religious song and dance is forced upon/enjoyed by the devout participants. Jones was very serious about communist and socialist philosophy, tying it into a political interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ. He was extremely derisive of what he called "white" (as in the caucasoid race) Christianity, and viewed communism/socialism as a radical enacting of the ideals of Jesus. To this end he even idolized the communities of Cuba and the U.S.S.R. to his church, maintaining those places as havens against the Satanic evil empire of the United States. He believed that the Jesus Christ of the Bible was a revolutionary agent who wished for people to fight against the evil men in charge and those who would befoul and demean the temple of his Father.

"Jim Jones is a rare, rare specimen. Jim Jones is a symbol of what we all ought to be about. . . Jim Jones is, in my opinion, a true human being." - Willie Brown, Jr.

"In spite of the beauty of China, what it’s done domestically, getting rid of the rats, the flies... nothing justifies this kind of uh, inexcusable behavior. That’s why we’re pro-Soviet. That’s why we stand by the Soviet Union as the avant-garde, because this is a hellish thing to do, to support one of the most brutal fascist regimes, who has tortured dark members— the black members of its population..." - Jim Jones on the differences between China and Russia, taken from an FBI recording

Jones began his church in 1953 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His integrationist policies were highly unusual, and he was enthusiastic to include any willing person as a member of his church, outside of any consideration other than the fact that they were looking to be saved. He was known for his fiery sermons that often alluded to an end-times philosophy. He preached that the wicked were in charge of the world, and that God's chosen people (conveniently consisting mostly of people within his own congregation, as well as well-connected politicians and business owners who could assist Jones in his aims) must be vigilant and alert for the coming persecution that was to take place from an impending Antichrist. This philosophy still permeates today, well outside of cults such as Jones' and into the teachings of mainstream religion. Regardless of the fallacy of his philosophy, many were keen to heed his teachings and were convinced to hand over much of their time and money to the People's Temple. Taking his teachings to an extreme of paranoia, in 1965 he begins to warn his congregation of an impending nuclear holocaust that would strike the United States, presumably from the Communist forces. He used the liberal mixed-race congregation's resentment toward the U.S. Government and their segregationist policies as evidence of the evil of the United States. He began convincing his congregation that God himself was angry with the the USA and would destroy it within their lifetime. With this in mind, he told his flock of a prophecy that he received in a dream, stating that they needed to move to Ukiah, California, a place that would be spared from the impending nuclear destruction. Death was always impending, hovering over the People's Temple even before their dramatic move to California.

"Something's got a hold on me... I went to a meeting last night, but my heart wasn't right... something got a hold of me." - lyrics from the song "Something's Got A Hold On Me" by the People's Temple Choir

The move to California was politically fortuitous for Jones, who quickly rose to prominence for his unusually progressive approach to operating a religious structure. In 1971, Jones purchased a building in San Francisco that he moved his business operations to. The People's Temple was watched closely by Jones and close-knit team employed at the higher levels of his operation. The members of the church worked constantly, building up the remote grounds that they all lived on into a handmade socialist paradise. The enthusiastic singing and dancing of the church was legendary, and a record album titled "He's Able" was released by The People's Temple Choir, showing a tight and groovy performance style (not unlike that of Sly And The Family Stone) mixed powerful, rhythmic Gospel songwriting. The record is amazingly tight and well-composed, with eerily powerful and haunting melodies and words that hold double meaning after the events that befell the church. Not all was perfect in the Temple, however. Reports arose of people who left the church and told stories of Jones sodomizing church members, exposing himself privately to members of the congregation, and strange abusive conduct perpetrated on individual members in front of the rest of the church. Jones was extremely paranoid about spies and those who would betray him within his own organization, and he would hold sadistic displays of power against those who stepped out of line. He engaged in sexual acts with both male and female members of his congregation. Jones claimed to abhor homosexuality, and that his sexual intercourse with the men was for their own good, so that they could be symbolically linked with him. His sermons became increasingly surreal and removed from Biblical scripture, including a divisive incident where he decried the validity of the Bible itself, throwing his copy of it across the room, declaring it tainted by Satanic white influence. Jones maintained that he was an incarnation of the anointed Christ, and that his teachings superceded even that of scripture. He maintained a strange dogma that people born into capitalist societies were born into sin, but that those born into a socialist regime would be born sinless, encouraging members of his congregation to breed within the church. This policy created many children who were born into the People's Temple.

"Now the end is near, and there's not much time to give to those who need a change of mind. The love they need will help us all to see. So let us give them love, and set them free" - from the song "Set Them Free" by the People's Temple Choir

In the shadow of reports of his sexual and sadistic abuses being made public, Jones quickly brought the remaining members of his congregation to the conclusion that the United States government saught to destroy the People's Temple with a constant barrage of propaganda. The decision was made that they must flee to South America, and a mining area formerly owned by Union Carbide was purchased by Jones in the country of Guyana that was to be dubbed "Jonestown." Gradually, many members of the congregation made a pilgrimage to this new Church, which was built up by hand in much the same manner as the People's Temple back in the United States. However, Jonestown itself had a very different atmosphere than the congregation in Ukiah. Armed guards hired by Jones and his backers were on duty at all times. Similar to the Nazi policy of playing Wagnerian music and propaganda speeches loudly in occupied towns, a loudspeaker constantly blared instructions from Jim Jones, filled with false reports that the United States government was planning to come and kill everyone in Jonestown, and that the end was finally here. Drills were held to prepare for the impending attack, and suicide was constantly suggested as a way to escape to Heaven. A congressman, Leo Ryan, arrived to investigate the alleged abuses occurring at the camp and was surprised to see a singing and dancing congregation of seemingly happy, well-adjusted people. Several of the members, however, met with Ryan and his crew in private and asked to escape the settlement with them. After an attempted stabbing of Ryan by one of the Jonestown residents, he and his crew took fifteen defecting church members to an airstrip to escape the country in an airplane that Ryan arrived in. Most of them did not make it out of the area alive, and upon attempting to board his plane back to the United States, members of Jim Jones' private militia opened fire on Ryan, his crew, and those wishing to escape. In fact, as the shooting began, one of the defectors (who obviously was not sincere in his desire to escape) pulled out a gun and began to fire on Ryan and the others as well, clearly an agent planted to prevent Ryan and the defectors from escaping with information about the church. Two people survived the incident to tell the story thanks to some local workers who helped them to escape, even returning home with video footage. According to eyewitness testimony from survivors, on the morning of November 18, 1978, Jones himself got on the loudspeaker and called everyone in Jonestown into a single spot and told them that the time had come to meet the lord. This is where the residents of the People's Temple in Jonestown were instructed to drink poison at gunpoint. Members argued with his decision, stating that if the government was out to get them, then perhaps sanctuary could be found in the Communist nations that Jones spoke so highly of. Many ran off into the jungle amidst the confusion. People who did not wish to participate were given injections of cyanide or even shot by Jim Jones' private guerrilla squad (referred to as the "Red Brigade") point blank, and arranged in single file rows. Jones himself died from a gunshot wound to the head, and many people attempted to escape into the jungle, only to be killed by armed guards and brought back to be laid alongside the other bodies to keep up the illusion of a mass suicide. The members of his Red Brigade share with those who escaped them the distinction of being the only survivors of one of the single largest tragedies involving American citizens.

"Dad I see no way out — I agree with your decision — I fear only that without you the world may not make it to communism — Tish For my part — I am more than tired of this wretched, merciless planet & the hell it holds for the masses of so many beautiful people — thank you for the only life I've known." - Letter from a Temple member to Jim Jones (addressed as "Dad")

(For those interested in hearing stories from many survivors of Jonestown, including Jim Jones Jr., the documentary film "Jonestown: The Life And Death Of The People's Temple" is required viewing.)

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FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME FOUNDATION - "The youth room was pitch black when the lights were out, she said, but the room was equipped with a black light. When Bernard turned it on, the light revealed writings on the walls from ceiling to floor. “Every inch, from top to bottom, was writing,” Freitas said. The writing consisted of songs, lyrics and Biblical verses. Some of the words were inverted or changed, she said. - from the Federal criminal investigation report on the Hosanna Church made by prosecutor Lisa Marie Frietas.
"The idea that there are a few cunning, secretive individuals in positions of power somewhere in this country regularly killing a few people as part of some satanic ritual or ceremony and getting away with it is certainly within the realm of possibility... (I am) outraged that, in some cases, individuals are getting away with molesting children because we can't prove they are satanic devil worshippers who engage in brainwashing, human sacrifice, and cannibalism as part of a large conspiracy. " - from "Satanic Ritual Abuse," a report made for the FBI by Kenneth V. Lanning.

Daycare sexual abuse, church meetings where participants drink human blood, and after school care parties where children are forced to drink and eat mysteriously colored substances, these are the nightmare scenarios associated with stories of multiple-offender/multiple victim sexual abuse situations. Thanks to the efforts of organizations such as the "False Memory Syndrome Foundation," the widespread accusations of ritualized child sexual abuse that exploded throughout the 1980's and 90's have been actively contested and kept under wraps. This has been pushed even to the point of intense ridicule from the press and widespread disinformation regarding the reality of such claims. An example of one of these cases would be a recent investigation that was made regarding the Hosanna Church in Ponchatuola, Louisiana. Shortly after a woman living in Ohio called and registered a complaint with police making similar allegations, the pastor of the church visited local law enforcement and told a vivid story of group sex and ritual activity that occurred during off-hours at Hosanna. He had taken over the church from his father, who was in his own day a famous local preacher known for his positive impact on the community. After a series of excommunications against church members who angered him (including tresspasses such as visiting other churches), the younger preacher in time turned Hosanna into something resembling a Dionysian mystery sex cult more than a Protestant church. Members would engage in dramatic prayer sessions that would result in members literally vomiting while gyrating about, supposedly expelling sins or even demonic beings from their bodies. Late night adult/child orgies would occur in a dark back room (ironically occurring in the "Youth Center"), which according to initial investigators was covered in writing that could only be seen in the darkness under a blacklight. When the church was raided by police, strange markings that appeared to have been messily cleaned up by someone were found, including a noticeable pentagram still seen on the floor. A disturbing aspect of the man's confession was that he did not seem to think that he had committed criminal acts himself, despite the fact that he was the ringleader of the entire operation that he was describing to the police. This shows you the extent of the self-righteous "holy roller" Protestant mentality, where one can commit acts of unspeakable depravity with the forgiving power of Jesus Christ providing a safety net to assist in burying one's conscience. Although called "Satanic," the crimes that occurred at Hosanna Church were straight out of the Christian bible, particularly reminiscent not only of Lot's neighbors in Sodom but also his own subsequent actions of incest with his daughters (on his God's instruction) after his wife was turned to salt.

"Cultural rituals could include such things as what a family eats on Thanksgiving Day, or when and how presents are opened at Christmas. The initiation ceremonies of fraternities, sororities, gangs, and other social clubs are other examples of cultural rituals." - from "Satanic Ritual Abuse," a report made for the FBI by Kenneth V. Lanning.
"One night, he said, he heard a woman screaming that she'd "beat the sins out of them," followed by "hooting and hollering" and other sounds. "I'm a Catholic," Mr. Normand said. "I got the heebie-jeebies."" - from the news article "Sex Charges Follow Church's Collapse" by Rick Lyman New York Times 2005

Presumably because the case spanned several states, the federal government was quickly called in to investigate the case. Many people stepped forward to corroborate the claims without therapuetic or psychiatric intervention, but oddly enough a representative of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in the form of Dr. Richard Ofshe showed up from Berkeley, California to defend the accused. Although that organization exists to purportedly to combat the phenomenon of "recovered memories," this was simply a case where people were recalling events that had occurred very recently and that were remembered without the aid of "recovered memory" therapy. The organization has made it a point throughout their history to show up at many legal disputes involving what one FBI agent (Kenneth V. Lanning, in his 1992 FBI report "Satanic Ritual Abuse") has referred to as "multi-dimensional sexual abuse." The "multi-dimensional" aspect comes from the fact that large groups of people, both offenders and victims, are involved in the cases, which extend to dimensions that are complex and baffling, sometimes including bizarre details that seem impossible from a logical standpoint. Lanning identifies a controlling network of fear around these cases, along with a factor that he dubs as "multi-dimensional" motivations for the abuse (that is, motivations going beyond the immediate act of sexual gratification). The victims in the cases are controlled and kept silent through fear of violent acts, which they claim to have either have been threatened against them, or in some cases claim to have witnessed first-hand. This could be an initiatory or even somehow spiritual/ritualistic aspect to the crime that takes it beyond the realm of more common criminal motivation.

"Perhaps strangest of all, was the testimony of one boy who said that the McMartin teachers took students to a cemetery where the kids were forced to use pickaxes and shovels to dig up coffins. Once the coffins were removed from the ground, according to the child, they would be opened and the McMartin teachers would begin hacking the bodies with knives." - from The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial: A Commentary by Doug Linder (2003)

One can imagine how frustrating it would be to attempt to succeed in prosecuting a child molestation ring that consists of every adult member of the town, such as what Lanning encountered in Scott County, Minnesota in 1984. An entire community in Minnesota named after the Biblical river Jordan was swept up in allegations that divided the town by age. Cut-throat teams of lawyers and mental health experts descended upon Jordan in a situation that repeated many times throughout the 1980s, a time which contained an explosive concentration of what Lanning referred to in his report as "these kinds of cases." One of the most significant of these was the McMartin Preschool Trial, which also occurred in the early part of the Reagan decade. It was the most expensive trial in the United States until that of Oranthal J. Simpson. An ex-wife of Raymond Buckey (the grandson of the school's founder) accused him of sodomizing their young son, and quickly other allegations spread about the practices that were alleged to occur on the premesis. The woman who started the initial accusations was dead before the trial even began. Bizarre allegations of impossible events were described by the children, such as being flushed down toilets into secret rooms and descriptions of abusers with powers of flight. Tunnels that led to secret ritual chambers were described, and later researchers (including FBI agent Ted Gunderson) indeed found (widely contested) evidence of underground tunnels beneath the site of the school, agreeing with testimony given by the children. "Suggestive interviewing" was blamed for the accusations of the children, however in this case and many others of a similar ilk there is indeed physical evidence of abuse on the children themselves. Throughout the 1980s such cases became rampant, as similar situations were either brought to light or dramatically recreated in people's imaginations repeatedly until the early 1990s. A large problem with the identification and prosecution of such crimes is the fact that Satanism in its most "official" capacity in the United States is not a religion so much as a reactionary organized response to the perceived ill effects of Christianity on Western Civilization. Accusing people who are operating child abuse networks (which do, in fact, exist, in a multitude of platforms) of being part of a cult that serves interdimensional beings brings a court case into realms which are deemed laughable by the general public. The difficulty in prosecuting such crimes is often used as evidence of their non-existence. Often, claims such as "assaulted by a clown in a magic room" (an actual allegation from the Fells Acres daycare abuse trial) will be laughed at and pushed aside, with the brazen declaration that "no forensic evidence was found." Metaphysical crimes, it seems, are the hardest to cases to solve, especially when the universe that they exist in seeks to hide itself from the overarching authority.

"Sacrilegious actions and rites were not only performed on Christ’s altars, but had the connivance or at least the tacit permission of certain Cardinals, archbishops, and bishops. In total number they were a minority—anything from one to ten percent of church personnel. But of that minority, many occupied astoundingly high positions or rank…. The facts that brought the Pope to a new level of suffering were mainly two: the systematic organizational links — the network, in other words, that had been established between certain clerical homosexual groups and Satanic covens. And the inordinate power and influence of that network.” - Father Malachi Martin, from his book Windswept House

There is a resilience and constancy that many of the stories have to those who are willing to listen. Many of the accusations of the children that seem fantastical are still deeply disturbing on a strongly intuitive level. The fears seems to coalesce with shared childhood anxieties stemming from a nascent understanding of some of the darker and more confusing aspects of the adult world. The accusations become a Boschian tapestry of a Midaeval depiction of Hell, a sodomic Sabbat where incantations are read and blood is spilled over innocent bodies. Many of the stories stretched belief in that they involved human sacrifice and cannibalism, hard crimes to prove when presenting no actual evidence of any such activity. More than anything, the accusations hold up a mirror to the society that they emerged from, with the children speaking as conduits for the most depraved sins imaginable in our age. Much like the accusations of the existence of Bloody Mary (say her name three times in a mirror in the dark and she will appear), the stories took on a metaphysical life of their own to the children, encapsulating all of their fears of the nightmarish and stiltedly bureaucratic hypocrisy inherent within the world of American adulthood. The explosive sexuality and animalistic sadism buried underneath the polite surface culture of grown-ups became manifest in the increasingly metaphysical accusations of the children. With the reality of whatever abuse initiated the inquiry being buried amidst the public display. Many of the cases seem to emerge not from "Satanic" backgrounds, but often Churches and daycare centers that are ostensibly "family-oriented" and wholesome. To call the crimes satanic is to do a great disservice to the inherent culpability of "fine upstanding individuals" who hide behind a veil of respectability in order to get closer their victims. Ironically, the person accused of SRA (as Satanic Ritual Abuse is often dubbed) is usually not some derelict miscreant at odds with the world around them, but instead well-respected pillars of the community. To those familiar with the crimes and lifestyles of individuals such as John Wayne Gacy and Dennis Rader, this should not come as a surprise, but to the average person the moniker of "satanic" crime lends an unneccessary and confusing aura of drama to already complex and very real issue. Often those who refute these crimes cite the lack of evidence of human sacrifice or organized Satanic groups as proof that multi-dimensional child abuse cases cannot exist, but this is like saying that there are no muggings in New Orleans because no one can find the missing wallets after the fact. The goal of an organized criminal effort is to commit the acts and to not be caught, not to leave behind fantastical evidence to impress skeptics that wish to turn a blind eye to the abused and molested in favor of promoting the concept of "false memories" to explain when bad things happen.

"..."false memory" (is) seemingly sophisticated, but mostly contrived and often erroneous. (It has been created by) accused, convicted and self-confessed child molesters and their advocates (to) negate their abusive, criminal behavior."- C. Whitfield, "The "False Memory" Defense Using Disinformation and Junk Science In and Out of Court," Journal of Child Sexual Abuse March 2002

The tide of "anti-Satanic" hysteria began to crest and wane going into the new decade. Wikipedia cites an HBO made-for-TV movie (a film about the McMartin case that casts Ray Buckey as a victim of a witch hunt) as an important turning point for public opinion. Perhaps the proponents of SRA stories should have made their own made-for-TV film from their perspective and the momentum would have continued. In 1992, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (or F.M.S.F. for short) operates under the principle that the human mind is a deceptive, boobytrapped landscape that overzealous psychiatrists can tap into, causing people to remember things that did not occur. They maintain that mental health professionals are able to implant "false memories" in their patients, who then go on to accuse innocent people of abuse that did not occur. Unfortunately, the organization also does not provide any way to scientifically determine the difference between a "true" memory and a "false" one, so presumably one must keep their mind open to the idea that almost all memories could be false, implanted memories. The idea that a vast cross-section of therapists all decided to force fake memories on people for unknown reasons seems to this author far less plausible than the existence of well-established and hard working pedophile organizations who seek to protect their own members. Although they publicly claim to oppose only cases where "repressed" memory is uncovered, the F.M.S.F. often donates members of its Scientific Advisory Board to any court case that resembles so-called Satanic Ritual Abuse accusations. Their job is to aid the defense in convincing the jury of the impossibility of the crimes and accusations. The "false memory" concept was introduced by several doctors, based theoretically around the idea that recovered memory therapy is creating an epidemic of false memories of sexual abuse in the American population, leading to false accusations. The husband and wife duo who founded the group did so after their daughter directed allegations of sexual abuse against them. They proceeded to defame their own daughter in a non-peer-reviewed but widely distributed article as preparation for the formation of their new crusade against false memories. Another founding member of the group was Ralph Underwager, former member of the F.M.S.F. Scientific Advisory Board, who was quoted in a journal distributed among pedophiles extolling the positive aspects of adult/child sexual relations. After this, he was forced to resign from his post for the sake of the foundation's reputation, but he was most likely expressing a sentiment shared with his colleagues, albeit an unpopular one among larger society. The F.M.S.F. seems to exist simply to combat the specific concept of organized pedophilic child abuse anywhere in the United States, acting as a line of expert witness defense for properly-networked pedophiles under prosecution for their "multi-dimensional" crimes. In the particular instance of Dr. Ofshe arriving in Tangipahoa Parish to presumably refute allegations of abuse that the defendant himself made, a local judge actually prevented the good doctor from appearing in court on grounds of unsound science. The preacher who was apparently behind the Hosanna church scenario is currently serving four life sentences in a row in prison. Although there were extensive interviews with the accused ringleader conducted by the Federal prosecuters involved in the case, none were recorded for posterity.

"Even if only part of an allegation is not true, what then is the answer to the question "Why are victims alleging things that do not seem to be true?" After consulting with psychiatrists, psychologists, anthropologists, therapists, social workers, child sexual abuse experts, and law enforcement investigators for more than eight years, I can find no single, simple answer. The answer to the question seems to be a complex set of dynamics that can be different in each case. In spite of the fact that some skeptics keep looking for it, there does not appear to be one answer to the question that fits every case. Each case is different, and each case may involve a different combination of answers." - from "Satanic Ritual Abuse," a report made for the FBI by Kenneth V. Lanning.
"One child said that as the game was being played the children sang, "What you see is what you are, you're a naked movie star!" - from The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial: A Commentary by Doug Linder (2003)

(Respect and thanks must be given to Alex Constantine for his extensive research.)

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CAYLEE ANTHONY - Summer of 2008 was the Summer of Caylee Anthony for many, in particular for television crime pundit Nancy Grace. Not since the OJ Simpson trial in the 1990s has there been a murder trial that has been as aggressively pushed on the American people like that surrounding the death of little Caylee Anthony. Before she was found, the bottom television crawl of the Nancy Grace program starkly asked "Where's Caylee?," already dubbing the seemingly vapid and carefree mother Casey (clearly outlined as the murder suspect) as "tot mom." Officially the girl's death seems to have been deemed an accident, although there is circumstantial evidence pointing to the idea that she was murdered by someone (many suspect the mother) by an overdose of chloroform. There is even speculation that it was a murder committed simply to allow the mother to go about her partying lifestyle as if she was single. This is a preposterous notion, as the grandparents in the situation have made it clear that they would have taken care of their granddaughter in any case. An agonizing month or so of speculation was spent on television news anticipating the discovery of the missing girl, and eventually remains were discovered hidden away, the little girl's bound with duct tape in the same manner as Jobenet Ramsey.
Caylee was not the only missing child that summer, and may not have even been the cutest or most newsworthy. However the reports of the case have spread like a wildfire throughout the corporate media structure, like the Ramsey case before it. For whatever undetermined reason, the story has been followed religiously by the press in a manner that is usually reserved for presidential scandals. Ultimately, the masses, moved by the fate the befell the poor girl, especially those who were emotionally enraptured with the case from the beginning, were put through a ritualistic process of grief and disillusionment at both the cold depravity with which the child was senselessly disposed of as well as the controversial and crowd-displeasing verdict that came out of the trial. The "not guilty" verdict for Casey Anthony was too much for some people, with widely publicized reports of death threats directed toward the young lady after the results of the trial. The velocity of the story, and it's collision with the American financial crisis that has been occurring of late, is highly significant in the effect that the case has had on the overall national mood. Casey Anthony is propped up before the American public with the sole intention of creating rage and hostility at her actions, a smiling Alanis Morrisette-esque gremlin blankly peering back from tabloid covers, while a mother of three yelling children piles her groceries onto the counter and attempts to feed the household with a rapidly decreasing food budget.
With a multitude of other crises facing us, there is no logical reason for the story to be the monolithic entity that it has become, except for the fact that there is an escape within the details that speaks to the average person in a cavernous multitude of ways. For those who see the case as the story of a child murdered by an unknown assailant, it creates fear in their minds for their own children and the children of others. For those puritanical minds who simplistically see it as the story of a selfish girl sacrificing her own child for the ability to "be free" of responsibility, Casey Anthony provides an adequate scapegoat to direct their hatred toward. The aspect of multigenerational incest and internal family strife added to the case brings it closer to the experience and worldview of the average American television viewer. Something for nobody, something for everybody, after the events in courtroom 23 many in America were filled with anguish and anger.

BE READY FOR PART TWO
"EYES OF A PREDATOR"
COMING WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT
TAKE CARE
harshumanignorance@gmail.com
THE PIG WAS COOL. I KNEW HIM FROM SCHOOL.

2011-09-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

MY GOAT #1

UNLISTENABLE MUSIC

YARMULKER- "God must have been looking the other way the day I was born," thought Yarmulker aloud, as he fell hurtling toward the Earth from a speeding stealth jet. He knew that he should have thought twice before dealing with Jack Hogan and his gang of international arms smugglers, and here he was yet again faced with imminent demise. Even in the seconds spent regretting his business dealings, he was wasting valuable time... thinking quick he produced a grappling hook from his belt and aimed with 'faith to the wind' at a flagpole. He got a good feeling when he saw the good 'ol stars and bars smiling back at him. "At least Hogan dropped me off in the U.S. of A.!" Yarmulker thought as he fell to the Earth. Hogan's men were already waiting underneath him and loading their HF34 laser-guided cannons, with a sleek black art deco design and minimalist-inspired heat seeking missiles. Yarmulker always appreciated the sleek maneuverability of Hogan's weapons. He often wished that he himself could have such fancy gear, an inclination that drew him closer and closer to Jack Hogan's web of intrigue. Yarmulker was always looking for a way to acquire larger and larger weapons. It was a practice that he felt was important for psychological impact, and in addition to the logistic reasons it also made it feel stronger and more confident.
Yarmulker could picture the first time he had met Hogan as if it were yesterday. He remembered almost everything like it was yesterday, except for tomorrow, which he could remember like it was earlier today. Yarmulker had trained under Hogan as the prize pupil in the same international strike-force that now had him on the run. From the very beginning Yarmulker's harder-than-nails attitude rubbed Hogan the wrong way. Back in his training days, Hogan confronted Yarmulker after a long day of running through tires and firing heavy artillery.

HOGAN: "I've seen a lotta grunts come through here with a lotta attitude, but none with a crabapple stuck in their craw the way you do, 'Mulker. Why do you have to be so dang mean all the time?"
YARMULKER: "You want me to be nice??? I was nice once. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. Once, I held the door open for a lady at the post office. I just stood there waiting, a polite smile on my face and straining my arm to make a friendly gesture. She just walked right by and used the other door, Hogan. Not so much as a thank you. I stood there for almost an entire minute, putting myself on the line for the world to see. I risk my life out there every day for scum like that who can't even appreciate my polite gestures and you want me to be NICE? You got a lot of nerve, Hogan."

The truth of the matter is that there was an even deeper reason for Yarmulker's constant harsh attitude. When he turned 18 years old, he checked into an ATM and saw that someone had taken $382.17 from his bank account, and ever since then has vowed to find out who it was that ruined his birthday. But Hogan would never know this more sensitive side of Yarmulker. Once their differences with one another came out into the open, they soon would become mortal foes.

Back in the present time, Yarmulker swung with grace, using his grappling hook as a lasso on the flagpole. He waved at the "ol' Red-White-and-Blue," swinging valiantly over his foes. Triumphant orchestral music began swelling in the air, seemingly from nowhere, highlighting the daring nature of his victorious escape in a bleating Wagnerian refrain. Hogan's men were stunned by the sudden dramatic music and the overall majestic nature of Yarmulker in general. Their bullets proceeded to go every which way in the meelee, avoiding the sweaty visage of our hero, while his bullets seemed to have tiny little eyes that found their target precisely. He swung across purple mountains majesties, and saw a rocket's red glare as he abruptly collided with the glass window of the cafeteria at the National Stamp Archive building. Amidst shattered glass and confused onlookers, Yarmulker found himself in a situation where he had to quickly devise a plan. Hogan and his international strike force would not let up unless a display of ultimate force was put into motion. Always inspired by the archaic battle methods of the midaeval era, Yarmulker stormed into the kitchen of the National Stamp Archive and pulled off his bullet belt, telling the cooks to give him as much boiling oil that they could provide... then, climbing on top of the building, he poured it with great might on Hogan's men from above. The hot burning oil rained down on the men, searing their sleek black uniforms and melting off their skin.
With his hair flapping in the wind, Yarmulker yelled "You'll never take me alive, Jack Hogan!!!" Louder and louder the triumphant music exploded through the air as Yarmulker fired at the men, unnecessarily damaging their writhing bodies further in a maniacal display of firepower. The growing torrent of burning oil turned Hogan's international strike force into a cannibal's teriyaki weekend, and the resonating and pounding bullets further distorted the men's corpses in a grotesque manner that appeared unreal as the melting soldiers' bones virtually exploded on impact of Yarmulker's giant heat-seeking bullets. As Yarmulker laughed maniacally, many in the kitchen and cafeteria area began to feel ill at his display of heriocs. One man attempted to alert the authorites, frantically dialing and explaining with great haste what was happening to an emergency operator who assured them that the Mulk was simply doin' his job.

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LITTLE PETER AND THE FIRST GHOST- "I'm hungry, momma."
"Go in that kitchen and look at that pile of dishes innare. Then you won't be hungry no more!"
Little Peter's mother blurted this at him like an irate cow warning random passerby. When she would make that sound, Little Peter would go into his room and hide. Before he closed the door, he heard her bite into an old dusty apple, making a loud crunching sound. "CRUNCH! MUNCH!" she emitted before he had shut the door. He grew so hungry that he felt that he needed to do something in order to satisfy the hunger or he would simply burst. After some hours of contemplation, it would come to fruition that he could please himself with elaborate imaginary dishes to tide himself over with. He could eat make believe ham and cheese sandwiches, a delicious make-believe four stage lasagna, and a variety of make-believe hamburgers with imaginary garden salad (topped with a variety of imaginary dressings!). This was a regular habit for Little Peter, as today was simply a normal day for him, but on this particular day he made so much make-believe food that he did not know how he coud possibly finish it. After further, careful consideration, Little Peter decided that in order to not be wasteful, he had to make up a friend to share his great bounty of delicious food with. The intoxicating aroma of the imaginary food was still very much in Little Peter's mind, but he was somewhat shocked and disturbed to find that something strange happened.
A protoplasmic form had materialized in the corner of the room and looked very pleased to be invited for company. He wore what Little Peter considered to be old-timey clothes, a bowler hat and a mismatched suit like some cartoon hobo. He was very polite, and after moments of staring blankly and grinning at the boy, the leering house guest opened his ghost mouth he began to speak. "Hellllo, Littul Peeter" the being began to drawl. Little Peter was scared for a moment and considered going to get his mother, but he already knew that she would never believe him, and probably punish him for fibbing. He was just going to have to talk to his new dinner guest and see where this would go. And besides, the ghostly entity seemed to know his name. He didn't want to be rude to familiar company. And so with a heavy sigh, Little Peter opened his mouth with the intention of talking to the ghostly entity staring across the room from him.
"Well hello there..." his voice began to echo in the empty room and all the sudden Little Peter began to feel quite self-conscious. What if he was just talking to himself, and this was some hunger-induced fantasy? The ghost could sense his trepidation and began to float towards him, which had the effect of terrifying the boy immensely. As he saw the overly pleased and translucent form head towards him, he closed his eyes in fear. His body grew cold as the ghost filled his form and seemed to get inside Little Peter's mind. All of the sudden a flood of memories filled his head. He saw a large rock falling on a man clad in the skin of a bear, and a woman grieving over the body. He saw centuries of human development, the building of the pyramids and ziggarauts all the way through the castles of the middle ages. He saw the plagues take over Europe, and the birth of Industrial civilization. Quickly the areas nearby to bodies of water became populated, and cities grew with artificial light across the Earth. He understood immediately that what stood in front of him was possibly the very first ghost, a man who died and whose essence had never left the planet. After Little Peter came to his own mind again and recovered from the ghost's sudden shared flood of knowledge, he found himself in an unkempt room with no more imaginary food but one very real First Ghost staring back at him.
There was an old plate with some macaronis on it on the floor that Little Peter handed to the First Ghost and he hungrily put his face over the food, feeling the essence of it. The Ghost made a gesture indicating that he indeed knew and enjoyed macaronis. To the Ghost though, Peter's attention was like real macaronis for his palette, and thanks to Little Peter he would have his fill. He would sit at the dinner table every night and tell stories to Little Peter, tragedies and dramas spanning decades, and he would eat up Little Peter's attention like delicious pasta. Meanwhile, Little Peter's mother would grow more and more distant, watching her son with trepidation as he succumbed to what she viewed as madness. After several months of these sort of dinners, Little Peter woke up to find that the odd fellow had gone away, leaving behind the following note on the kitchen table, written in a strange handwriting that neither of them had ever seen before:
"THANK YOO LITLE PITER AND MOMMA."

VIOLENT VISIONS

E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL/POLTERGEIST (1982 STEPHEN SPIELBERG/TOBE HOOPER)- E.T. The Extra-terrestrial serves as a cultural rite of indoctrination depicting a tiny man-like big-eyed creature who resembled packaged meat wrought with life who shared with the world the magic of death and resurrection. As a young child I even had a small plush doll of the creature, whose early appearances in the film are accompanied by ominous atonal sounds. In some ways a sequel to "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind," E.T. began life as an alien invasion thriller that Spielberg was interested in making during the late 1970s. He attempted hiring veteran Texas horror director Tobe Hooper to helm the project, but Hooper was not keen on the idea of a sci-fi picture and instead wanted to investigate the concept of ghosts and the afterlife. Hooper had been using the old studio of Hollywood great Robert Wise and found a book that Wise used in his paranormal research (specifically for the film "The Haunting"), and contained very pertinent information regarding the subject of Poltergeist activity. It was on Hooper's insistence that the project transformed into what became a Spielberg production named after that very phenomena. Spielberg transferred his enthusiasm regarding the search for extraterrestrial life into a film that he was already developing, a more realistic drama about a young boy growing up in the 1970's. Some of the menace of the original concept was retained in the mood of parts of the final product, although the overall film has a clearly miraculous and fantastical message towards contact with beings from outer space. The "extra" terrestrial race that E.T. comes from come to the Earth to investigate vegetation, and seem to exist peacefully with local animal life. However, when E.T. is left behind on Earth by his brethren creatures as they flee from humans in trucks who show up to their exploratory mission, he must escape into suburbia for an uncertain fate.

The fact that E.T. so resembles assembly-line packaged meat always mystified me as a child. Steven Spielberg and several other filmmakers were once given a private screening by Stanley Kubrick of his "favorite film," which turned out to be the relatively recent (at the time) avant-garde nightmare "Eraserhead" by David Lynch. This film featured a tiny, dying puppet fetus that moaned and wheezed a tragic existence that in many ways proceeds the tear-jerking appearance and mannerisms of Spielberg's symbolic humanitarian puppet friend. The creature's wheezes and moans evoke a sympathy that comes from a combination of characteristics evocative of both the infantile and the elderly of the human species, along with decidedly non-human, sometimes simian or reptilian, characteristics. The young boy Eliot's detached fragility and sensitive nature are reflected in the creature, most especially in the ritualized death scene of the beloved creature that makes up much of the last third of the film, where he is seemingly killed by a team of doctors.

Throughout E.T.'s time, from the beginning of the film, there is an indication that he is ill and not going to survive on this planet. His return home becomes more and more important than the characters other concerns within their daily lives due to this. In many ways, the little meat man-puppet represents Eliot's own mortality and flesh and blood essence, perhaps even a connection between early aspects of puberty leading to an eventual awareness of mortality. The hospital scenes in particular (combined with a home invasion sequence highlighted by the frightening appearance of men in suits who seem to be government agents), suggest a nightmarish system of bureaucratic science and technology designed to kill what the space creature (referred to as a "man from outer space" and the "man from the moon") represents. This is perhaps the darkest aspect of the film, with the fear surrounding the creature at the beginning of the film simply being a fear of the unknown which gives way to a shared understanding and awareness. The fear evoked by the government agents suggests a sinister finality that lays outside of the film's mostly childish viewpoint.

More typical of the tone of the film is a scene where Eliot's mother reads to the young Gertie (played by Drew Barrymore, who is seemingly modeled visually after the youngest Brady Bunch daughter) while the creature observes from the vantage point of a curiously-designed closet that links together Gertie and Eliot's rooms. The story is of Peter Pan, the modern Green Man myth warning of the death of the child within. The portion of the story that E.T. hears relates specifically to a wrenching scene regarding the death of Pan's faithful friend Tinkerbell. The fairy is supposedly dependent upon the reader to clap and declare a belief in fairies in order to bring her back to life. This very scene is re-enacted by E.T. himself in the latter part of the film, where the creature is detained in a body bag and Eliot is allowed to tell him goodbye by one of the doctors (played by Peter Coyote). While declaring his love for E.T., the creature (now covered in a strange white dust resembling powdered sugar) miraculously comes back to life. It is coincidentally timed with an apparent call from E.T.'s "people" however, as his heart begins to glow and he indicates to Eliot that they may have succeeded in the creature's insistent quest to "phone home."

In contrast, the film Poltergeist shows not an urge to reconcile with the demons of suburbia, but instead offers only the bleak solution of futile escape. Opening with a montage of sequences cleverly designed to provoke the viewers ability for abstract thought, we see a distorted and extreme-close-up view of a television set as the closing patriotic montage and national anthem plays, giving way to static. In the days of broadcast television, before cable, there was a time (around 2am or so, around when most bars close) on all stations when no programs aired, simply a static signal or a station identification card appeared in some cases. The family dog, "E. Buzz," goes throughout the house from person to person, seemingly in an effort to wake up each member of the family (although he pilfers some potato chips from the older daughter, played by Dominique Dunne). The youngest child of the family, memorably portrayed by Heather O' Rourke, wakes up in a trance and eerily gravitates toward the static-y televisions set, famously declaring "They're here."

The question of the movie seems to be who exactly it is that is here, and although an answer is given in the form of a bunch of dead bodies literally buried underneath the house, this simple solution perhaps acts as a larger metaphor for living around the energies and efforts of those who came before us. From this eerie introductory scene, the film cuts to a bright vision of the American landscape. As the day begins in the suburbs, the camera grants us a beautiful panoramic view of the neighborhood, showing house after identical house lined up in a row. A man bikes down the street and children play with remote-controlled cars, disrupting the man's path. The many beers that he was carrying (he is on the way to the specific house that the story is centered around to watch a football game on television) spill out onto the ground, spraying wildly into the air as the remote-controlled cars zoom around them. As the balding and bearded man rushes in through the kitchen door, he disrupts a private moment between Dominique Dunne's character and a pickle, causing her to become very irate in one of the film's first instances of constant eating. He runs into the living room and begins to join in with his friends (including the patriarch of the house, whom we last saw sleeping in front of the TV in a reclining chair the previous night) as they shout wildly at the television screen. Beer continues to spray over all of the men. An alternate signal (of the children's program "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood") comes on the television, disrupting the football game that they were watching. This leads to a remote-control battle of satellite dishes between the male lead (played by Craig T. Nelson) and the head of the family next door. Amidst all of this air-wave frequency jamming (between the remote controlled car signals and the satellite manipulation, as well as the television's clearly powerful effect on the men's behavior, and the beer spraying through the air, and the television's strange hold over the younger daughter the previous night...), we begin to see a visual illustration of the idea of invisible energies, affecting the day to day existence in the lives of these characters.

Amidst all of this energy flying around, death is introduced. The family parakeet is found dead by the mother of the house as she replaces her son's sheets. The sheets are adorned with Stars Wars characters, references to which litter the room along with other real-life sci-fi and children's entertainment iconography. Significantly, this includes an extremely out of place (in a children's room) poster for the R rated film "Alien" as well as a prominently, awkwardly positioned skewed box of the board game CLUE, perhaps the placing of which indicates that many other 'clues' are hidden in the background. The mother attempts to flush the bird down the toilet and is interrupted by the younger daughter, who prompts them to hold a small funeral service for the bird. She insists that the bird (named "Tweety" after that hollow-eyed yellow beast from the Looney Tunes cartoons that adorns many a mudflap) does not like the smell of the box. She makes sure to put several items for the bird's comfort in the cigar box coffin, presumably for the next life, like the Pharoahs of ancient Egypt. Although the bird is clearly no longer alive, the small child does not accept that finality, perhaps because she has an inherent understanding that the spirit lives on, a reality that the latter portion of the film clearly adheres to.

A theme that strongly unifies both films is the notion that children have a deep understanding of the supernatural, as well an intuitive notion of sickness and death. In contrast to this, the adults are fearful and more literally-minded. In order to get his sister Gertie to not speak to anyone about seeing E.T. (referred to at times as a "goblin"), Eliot attempts to persuade her that only children can see the creature. This ties in with E.T.'s later Tinkerbell-like near-death sequence, where he is brought back to life by Eliot's love in a manner that seems to suggest that the love of a child has a magical healing power. After the creature's resurrection, he appears to the other children in a Christ-like manner, robed and with a prominent glowing "sacred heart." Men with shotguns wait to put E.T. to death as the children bike down the hill, yet the kids miraculously fly over the government agents thanks to the power of E.T. (and if you see the men holding walkie-talkies instead of long shotguns, you can gladly return your copy and try to find one of the original green-band VHS copies of this film where the movie wasn't digitally re-manipulated). Each of the two films unfolds quickly... strange and supernatural occurences exist next to the ordinary and every day, and quickly the characters are pushed to act in ways they never would have expected to due to events beyond their control. In many ways, these two films created a blue-print for the "thrill-ride" style of blockbuster film, with an ensemble cast terrorized and mystified by an outside force that is eventually reconciled or overcome.

For the family of Poltergeist, there is no reconciliation except for an opportunity to escape. A team of landscapers/renovators begin to dig up much of the back yard and leer lecherously inside. In a scene symbolic of violation from outside and a tainting of the shared pool of energy, one of the workers reaches inside the kitchen eats directly from a pot of pasta sauce, putting his tongue and mouth directly onto the spoon, and then putting it right back into the pot. Eating and consumption becomes a major theme, with family members and neighbors constantly stuffing things into their mouths throughout the film. In many ways the family is being fed off of by the entities that plague them, causing fear and manipulating them for their own unknown purposes. A goldfish is purchased for the younger daughter shortly before the family themselves become like fish in a tank themselves, first for the amusement of the workers during the daytime, and later at night by the ghosts that plague them. In one later scene, the mother of the house is dragged around her bedroom in a violent manner that suggests rape by an overpowering invisible entity, as the children threaten to be dragged into a passageway to the netherworld in the next room. Sexuality is obliquely referenced in some visuals, slyly (almost subliminally) suggesting an undercurrent of restless energy throughout the house. There is a literal explanation of the nature of the hauntings given towards the end of the film, that the ghosts are those of a cemetery that the entire neighborhood was built on. Symbolically however, it suggests the nature of ghosts as the energy of the dead, floating amidst us and harnessed by some specific entities that exist right outside of our plane of existence. In this way, the world-view of the film is reflected somewhat in "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" and the connecting series. In a scene that returns to the kitchen, the mother of the family plays with the spirits for her own amusement, placing chairs and even her daughter in a circle on the ground to watch them move across the room with the joy of teenage girls playing with an ouiji board. Her toying with the spirits is shown to be dangerous however, when they take away her daughter during the middle section of the film, keeping her somehow physically between the land of the dead and our plane of existence.

The emotional cues of the films from the music are different in their effect, but both were selected by Spielberg. John Williams brings a high-end string-heavy sentimentality to the majority of E.T. that constantly insists that the view feel what the cue is suggesting. Jerry Goldsmith's score for Poltergeist is much more subtle, especially at the beginning with the pleasant lullabye-like suburban theme that accompanies earlier scenes. Both movies do an excellent job of trying to depict to the audience the concept of psychic linking and telepathy, in an intuitive and easy to understand visual method of storytelling. Unlike E.T., Poltergeist is told strictly from the perspective of those dealing with the supernatural on this end, rather than giving the viewer a dual perspective or giving merit to communication with the beyond. The ghosts and the supernatural energy are depicted in a grand light show (similar in effect to the finale of "Close Encounters") that obfuscates the initial realism presented in the comparatively subtle opening sections of the film. Much like E.T., although many incredible sequences abound, the middle and end of both films get built up to a point of hysterical screaming and stylized special effects, with many of the subtle aspects glossed over in favor of bludgeoning the viewer with emotionally-wrenching content (the supernatural abduction of the daughter in Poltergeist, the death of the E.T. creature). In the middle section of Poltergeist, the mother and daughter are "born again" out of a light, covered in afterbirth, after following the instructions of an old lady who makes her take a vow to do whatever she says, even if it goes against her beliefs "as a Christian." This seems to be the main effort of both of these 1982 productions, to get a largely Christian and even puritanical set of American audiences to accept these ideas that are alien and even directly opposed to their own. The end result of the consumption is shown to be humans fate to become rotting meat (both in a gruesome sequence in which a sandwich and chicken leg become infested with maggots and begin to spew gore, as well as the physical appearance of multitudes of dead bodies rising from the Earth at the end of the film). There were rumors that Poltergeist used actual dead bodies on set, and in fact Tobe Hooper did in fact use dead bodies for the set dressing of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II (the human corpses were acquired from India). In many ways, this fear represented in Poltergeist is overcome by the other film, in the humanitarian embrace of a child-like alien being who resembles sausages and ham.

In this way the large influence of Disney is apparent in these two films, both of which have a strong effort to get "regular" moralistic Americans to identify with the people depicted in the film, as well as capturing the enthusiasm regarding concepts such as alien visitation and supernatural co-habitation. After the enormous success of both films, Spielberg contemplated making a horror-themed sequel to "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" in which a race similar to the E.T. creature comes to the Earth with carnivorous intent. Although it was never made, it shows that the horrific and ominous nature of the creature's visit to Earth was never completely out of the director's mind while making the original landmark film. Both "E.T. The Extra-terrestrial" as well as "Poltergeist" are filled with rich visual storytelling that yield an infinite set of interpretations for years to come. Both films were also widely seen by children, and did much to supplant in the minds of viewers notions of contact with the things outside of our ordinary life. In keeping alive the dreams and nightmares of children, fantasy can be used to grapple with harsh realities as well as the joys of life, and both films bring together avant-garde conceptualization with a post-modern flair that creates a hyper-realization of the fantastic and the "innocent", putting the vast audiences exposed to these films from a young age into a personalized belief in magic and the extraordinary.

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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THE FABULOUS STAINS (1982 LOU ADLER)- Bizarre Lou Adler fantasy take on a great screenplay from the pseudononymously credited Nancy Dowd (via the non-existent "Rob Morton"), who also brought us the script to the classic 1977 hockey picture SLAP SHOT. Starring the youthful Diane Lane and Laura Dern, this farce on the New Wave era is played off disarmingly straight by director Lou Adler. Some of the editorial choices seem to be made under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. The following dialogue loop is spoken by a vapidly grinning girl sitting in the ladies room of a rock and roll club (in response to the question "Who's playing tonight?"):
"I get morning sickness now all the time. You know, it's like, I threw up this morning. And I keep eating. I've never eaten like this before...(indecipherable)... I have such a sweet tooth now. I get these cravings for sweets and candy and ice cream. It's like, I threw up this morning. But, I get morning sickness now. I eat and eat and eat and eat. And eat and eat. I just have to eat all the time! Ice cream and everything, I've never had such a sweet tooth. Cake and ice cream, candy..."

The dialogue is delivered as if the actress has no idea what she is saying and is being operated via remote control. This scene is followed by the first appearance of the dominant musical theme of the movie, a strange song titled "The Professionals" written by Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, who also performs in the pseudo Sex Pistols parody group The Looters in the film. Diane Lane's character, Corinne Burns, is somewhat of a local celebrity in a desolate industrial American town famous for a television show appearance. She sees a punk band on their tour through the States, leads her on a quest to fully activate her fierce determination for self-expression.

The message of the film is unclear. The girls form their group and are sort of chewed up and spat out by the entertainment industry, but then afterwards achieve world domination, presumably through word of mouth. Through the course of the film, the girls are wearing very bizarrely revealing outfits that apparently intentionally clash directly with Corinne (aka "Third Degree") Burns' stated intention that they do not "put out." Ironically, the character spends a great deal of time developing a sexual relationship with the singer of The Looters. The actual music presented by the Stains in the live setting seems somewhat modeled on the minimalist and legendarily bad punk of the Shaggs. Corinne gives a bizarre rant where she attacks the rock and roll power structure, but this is shown by the following events to be simply immature anger. There is a group called The Metal Corpses whom The Looters open for that are used as a parody of a wide range of groups, but seem to represent the hair metal establishment and oddly the hippie movement as well. Their music as presented in the film resembles a cross between Christian Death and Bon Jovi. The lead singer wears face makeup, and there are lots of really weird, weird scenes with these guys. Eventually (after the fatal overdose on tour of one of the Corpses ((who is oddly identified as "the founder of Acid Rock"))) the singer of The Looters notices Corinne Burns because she gave herself a really weird haircut and started wearing a leotard. In the meantime the media continues to have a rather obsessive fascination with Ms. Burns' appearance:
"Female Announcer: I think she looks very elegant.
Male Announcer: Oh? Well, takes all kinds...
Female Announcer: If you want to see this extraordinary person for yourself, she and her band are performing tonight at the Bamboo Room at the Fairgate."

In particular the group has an extrordinary influence on teenage girls, who all begin to dress in the bizarre self-exposing manner of Corinne Burns. The group plagiarizes the track "The Professionals" by the Looters and it leads them to immense success at a mall, leading to further declarations from the female newscaster of her blind worship and love for Corinne and the Stains. The director's heavy inclusion of images of female crotches during the musical section at the mall is somewhat overbearing and exploitational, but the message is clear regarding the power of female sexuality over the crowd. There are many truly and completely hateable characters in this film but the acting is by and large completely fascinating. The straightforward presentation of the film subverts the scripts clearly satirical intention, and it gives the film a hypnotically unreal quality akin to being suspended in a beautiful and intoxicating crystalline fluid.

Dialogue from Corinne's mother talking about a deathbed conversation with her dying sister:
"...but anyway, when she was sick one day she says, to me, she says "I'm not a failure for dying am I?" And I says, "No." So, I just wished that she had lived to see the kids on TV because I think that she'd be really proud."

Corinne spends the second half of the film in a leotard with no pants on, and by doing so proceeds to become a worldwide phenomenon inspiring girls all over the earth. The parodic depiction of atrociously neanderthal male rock groups dominating the market makes the hostile takeover of The Fabulous Stains more believable. A major turning point seems to be when she threatens to cause physical harm to her manager with a manual can-opener over royalties. In the end, they perform a new version of "The Professionals" with a strong anti-communist, pro United States military message.

But even after a hard day of going to war against Mikael Gorbechev and the forces of evil, girls still just wanna have fun. Especially Laura Dern, who is uniformly awesome throughout this film, as always.

This is an exploitational and morally ambiguous film with a confusing story. It is stylish and has an extremely likable cast, especially the Stains themselves whose fiery performances and delivery of insane dialogue is the reason to watch this film. An excellent and highly fetishized, albeit unrealistic, teen fantasy.
"I want my cut... Give me my money!"

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THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970 ROY WARD BAKER)- Marcilla/Carmilla (Ingrid Pitt) is a beautiful ancient vampire who always hurts the one she loves. Her aching passion for pretty girls is only matched by an intense thirst for blood. Marcilla/Carmilla's mom is a countess and drops her off at elegant castles, where she inevitably attracts the attention of the male of the species while simultaneously developing an intense relationship with the nearest bosom-heaving virgin. In her first incarnation (as Marcilla) she is dropped off at Christopher Lee's home and quickly begins to seduce his beautiful blonde daughter Laura (Pippa Steel). Unfortunately, she cannot help her desire to drink blood and deplete life forces from her beloved. Laura begins to have a multitude of nightmares and gradually becomes more and more sickly. In the second location, the cycle is repeated under the name of Carmilla with the beautiful Emma (Madeline Smith). Of course, the usual suspects come to spoil the fun in the form of a bunch of stern and very British male vampire hunters.

The crux of the film is the relationship between Carmilla and Emma. Although cruel in her ways, Carmilla has a true love for Emma that is apparent as the character seems to have regrets and sadness about her role as a life-destroying vampire. Complex characterization without any overwrought crying or hand-wringing, just solid depiction of beautiful vampire girl love story. Many beautiful dream-like sequences punctuate the drama, and the actual depictions of nightmares are artistic with a classic avant-garde influence. There is a scene where Emma looks directly at the viewer as Carmilla begins to kiss her midsection that seems to be a direct precedent for a similar shot of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in front of a mirror in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." Emma swings between seduction and horror in her relationship with Carmilla.

There are some brief and shocking depictions of gore, including an opening sequence where a man with a shaggy bowl haircut stalks and decapitates a beautiful blonde lady vampire, seemingly unrelated to the situation with Pitt's character, as well as some after-the-fact shots of some of Pitt's victims.

There are some strange elements to the script that are perhaps better explained in the novel "Carmilla" that this film is based on than in this film itself. Carmilla is watched throughout the film by a strange vampiric character who is dressed like a classic Dracula archetype and simply grins and laughs in people's faces when faced with social interactions. Strange fellow, well dressed though. It is the dead girls popping up throughout the countryside that seems to set off some alarms and starts the "witch-hunt" for the town vampire. I really wanted this to end differently, with the lady vampires killing everyone and taking over the castle.
Beautiful and tragic vampire love story between Carmilla and Emma makes this one a must-see. Pippa Steel is excellent also as the first victim of Carmilla (nee Marcilla). Now that the real Ingrid Pitt is gone from this world, we only have these films to remember her beauty, and this one is a fine showcase for her expressive acting talent.

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WALL MANIACS
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OH HAI- Welcome to the first issue of MY GOAT. Maybe after reading it you will feel like you have found out more about me. Recently I found myself writing more and more on the internet the sort of things that I think to myself or would write down in a notebook in the past. Curious about this, I came across an article talking about how access to the internet and the ability to satisfy curiosity at the click of a mouse has caused people to give into "lower impulses" that they ordinarily would not succumb to. All of the sudden it all began to make sense.
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FAERIES SUMMER TOUR- All the way back in 2002, some friends and I started a hardcore punk band called The Faeries. By 2004, my swelling resentment and unwavering hardcore attitude had grown to insane bounds. An album had been recorded in Falls Church, Virginia at a home studio of a fellow who played in some bands and was a friend of Mike Taylor (Pg. 99, Hissing Choir, Mannequin). Mike was having us recorded for a full length release on his nascent but ill-fated 'Yr Screaming Youth' label. However, this was not to be, and the record ended up coming out on CD on a label run by Bryan Funck, who also booked our tour. Many of the ideas and concepts behind the Faeries were fueled by dinners that guitarist Serpas got us invited to, where 4-star chefs would make food that has little flowers in it and we would all just hang out and relax. A lot of times we got together at the apartment of a zen-like and calm individual named Kyle Rockefeller and just threw ideas around. It came from a desire to create a band that would combine a gritty punk rock attitude with a sense of fantasy and the bizarre. Faeries ended up having a decent set of legs, and those legs grew to the point that we stretched them out and strutted across to the East Coast and then back around again in the year 2004. We played a psychedelic style of hardcore punk influenced by Flipper, Born Against, and in particular the Athens, Georgia hard rock group Harvey Milk (whom we eventually got to play a show with in a different line-up in 2009 under the short-lived moniker Stupid Man).
Our album was titled "Riot In The Hive Mind" and was very much a product of the post-9/11 "Double-U" era (as opposed to the current post-Wall Street bailout "Oh!" era). It tells the story of a hyper-inflated police state where the band is murdered by federal agents, which leads to outrage from the public and rioting in the streets. Ultimately, the people's hubris manifests in the form of giant gods and monsters, such as Fletcher (depicted on the cover and inside the accompanying booklet as a ravenous cartoonish rabbit head affixed to a human arm emerging from a cloud, a retarded and deranged violent urge of the people) and Molech (a giant stone owl that acts as the Molech of the ancient Hebrews, inspired by the giant stone statue at Bohemian Grove and subsequent misinformation about it from Alex Jones).

It was inspired by the horrors of 9/11 and an attempt to reconcile the ferocious lack of humor in the public eye at the time. The grim "War On Terror" era, and the divisive nature of political discussion stemming from it, was heavy on my mind. There were talks of a follow-up seven inch record with the working title "Sex Trauma!" that was to contain the songs from that era that were not on the full-length, all of which were themed around human sexuality and influenced by the writings and studies of Wilhelm Riech. I ran across an internet download of the full-length recently, but it erroneously contained our first demo, which featured an additional guitarist and some of these other songs that I speak of. We had that thing with us on the first Faeries summer tour, where we played in a punk house in Ohio that was raided by the cops because residents were firing bottle rockets at their neighbors before a long drive straight back down to Louisiana. I had imagined the band as an important force in the world, and put every ounce of my being into exploring it to this end.

The result of all this was that many of the audiences that we played in front of were composed of political types who had heard that we had a strident social message, instead only to find an insane set of psychedelic/nightmarish philosophy, based around the whims of my overactive post-teenage libido. The tour van had too many people in it, in the tradition of hippy caravans, including for a brief time the guy who supposedly wrote the Crimethinc book "Evasion." This book was a much-discussed post-graduate manual for punk rock hippies about how to get free pizza and live in a library, stuff like that. He gave a talk of some sort at our "house" the night before. Bryan Funck and some other kids had rented out the top of a mattress warehouse, that I had actually moved into at the point in my life before this tour. I lived in a room that was not rigged up with power, which I only received from an extension cord. I would listen to the radio, television on the radio, records of old-time music, and cdr bootlegs of Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse sets, and in that room I would write and draw. I had a laptop computer that I kept most of my writing work on, with the long-range goal of publishing a small zine called "Jail." When I woke up in the morning, I would only know that it was light outside because of a crack in the roof of the warehouse. There was a large hole in the ceiling of my room which led directly to the attic, and therefore the roof. The small ray of light would shine down during parts of the daytime directly through both holes and onto a drawing of the Virgin Mary that was on the wall over my bed. Also on the walls was grafitti including a stylized dollar sign with swastika arms coming off of it, which became one of several unofficial logos for the Faeries, along with an evil-looking stylized television.

Our first date of tour was in Little Rock, Arkansas. We played at a punk house occupied by a local band, I think that they were called the Chicklettes. The singer had a powerful teenage rocker persona and a cute haircut, and my girl-crazy mind had no problem being completely enthralled with her. I remember they played a style of rudimentary punk, and the night ended with hours and hours of the locals dancing in the living room to Misfits, Dead Kennedys, and even Danzig music playing on a loud stereo. Eventually someone else let us go to their house to sleep. It was really hot there and smelled like cat pee, but at least there was no Danzig music playing cranked up to eleven. Tulsa, Oklahoma saw the Faeries playing a generator powered show underneath an overpass. That night we were disrupted by homeless people living nearby. One particularly bilous woman expressed great concern that someone had stolen something from her, and several other locals attempted to try their hand at the microphone. The next day's performance in Phoenix, Arizona was even more stark, an appearance at a coffee shop where the locals were clearly not primed for the appearance of a thrash metal band during their evening rush. The guy who put on the show lived above a preschool, where we stayed after the divisive local appearance and were given an assortment of Clif bars to eat. A leathery, weather-beaten man who was friends with the promoter arrived in the night and told us many tales. He had the appearance of a Kurt Russell character from a John Carpenter movie, but 50 years into the future after a long and rough life. Both of the men had the sandblasted, dry appearance of people from a Mad Max film. When the older fellow noticed that I had a cough, he handed me a piece of raw garlic and instructed me to eat it. It seemed to work, as my oncoming cold was gone the next day. Among the many tales spun, he told us of being in an Arizona bar that was greeted with the presence of the great Axl Rose. Axl Rose announced his presence, and commandeering the sound system proceeded to subject everyone in the bar to the as-yet-unreleased Guns N Roses album "Chinese Democracy." He said that the bar patrons became visibly uncomfortable after several songs, clearly not enjoying the music. The lack of positive response seemed to upset and even infuriate Mr. Rose. At the time I was not so sure of the validity of the story, but now that the album has been released it seems highly plausible that this situation actually occurred. The guy who lived at the house had to head out early in the morning due to the fact that he had participated in an act of civil disobedience. He had chained himself to the gate of some govermnent facility, and was going up against charges of terrorism under recently (at the time) passed Patriot Act laws. Apparently he represented himself in court and won his freedom... I would love to have heard his speech.

Our trip from Arizona to California was rather perilous. An intense heat surrounded us once we were near the desert... people in the van would pour water on themselves only to watch it disappear almost immediately in the dry heat. Water reservoirs were located regularly throughout the mountains and crevasses of the desert landscape, but they were filled with a disgusting thick liquid that was dotted with dead flies and other insects. At one point, on the corner of a steep hill, we passed a flaming U-Haul truck that was on the side of the road. The occupants were just standing outside the thing and watching all of the contents go up in flames. This was potentially symbolic for us all, as one of the funnest and most positive experiences that we all had together as a band was a show played in a U-Haul storage space. Eventually the temperature dropped and we began to see foliage once again on our way to the lovely town of San Diego. There we played a radio show with a bunch of other terrible bands.
We jumped on a show in Los Angeles playing in front of an emo crowd, and they tolerated our madness well. A trip to Amoeba Records led to a drive down Sunset Strip listening to Hulk Hogan's hip-hop/rock album that was acquired by Faeries drummer Isidore "Justin" Grisoli for only three dollars. A show in Ventura ended with us all staying in a shanty town type of setup in Oxnard. Here a bunch of really nice people lived in between a strawberry field and rows of cilantro. It was here that we met a guy named Ray, a friendly thrash-head who lived on the grounds. He showed us an extensive collection of old-school punk and thrash memorabilia, including a really old D.R.I. hat from their first ever tour. Cool!
San Francisco is a beautiful town. I was impressed and shocked to see plums just falling on the ground from trees, uneaten by man or beast. Truly the land of plenty. Lots of self-righteous hippy signs in shops like "if you shoplift from here, then you must be mentally ill" at a record store, or "freedom of thought area" written on a sign at a coffee shop. In honor of the Grateful Dead, I wore my paisley shirt and on the suggestion of a song I heard on the radio once, I put a flower in my hair during the Faeries set. The 'no fun' brigade of the Gilman Street punk compound was not impressed with our antics. I recall a lengthy negotiation process in which only one person from the touring group was allowed into a back room to discuss the doling out of the gas money. We got the smallest cut despite being the only group not from the nearby region. I think our raw sexuality made them uncomfortable. The headlining act of the night was the most generic punk band I have ever seen in my life. I cannot remember what they were called, but the cookie-cutter punk rock kids at the venue went nuts for them.

The highlight of California for the little Faeries was Santa Cruz... it was the last show ever for a punk house on top of a hill filled with California punk kids. All the previous drive that day, tour manager Bryan Funck (Thou, Dear Diary I Seem To Be Dead) was emphasizing to me how important the idea of me staying sober at the show tonight was. As soon as we got to the top of the hill one of the guys from The Fleshies (killer San Fran-area punk group of a weirdness factor similar to us) greeted me with a bowl of fine California medicinal indica and gave me a swig of whiskey. There was a trampoline on the very top of the hill and a heavily forested area that several of us wandered around in for hours before the show. I can remember at some point jumping on the trampoline with Faeries bassist Cassandra Burrows (at the time that I met her she was a radio DJ, now she's a microbiologist... she's also about a head taller than me and is one of the hardest rocking people I have ever been in a band with) and seeing a completely clear sky above us, and the city of Santa Cruz down in the valley. Our actual set was performed with half the band peaking on psychedelic mushrooms. Fortunately we were tight enough at that point where we were able to sound as good to other people as we sounded to ourselves that night. Later during the Fleshies set some kids went through the giant glass window, with all of the sweat and humidity from the room spilling out into the hills outside.
After all of this, we made our way up to Portland and Seattle, both of which provided an anti-climactic finale to our beautiful West Coast visit. Isidore, being a huge fan of Nirvana, was excited to play the Seattle show. The guys from Akimbo, a relatively large act from the area, had promised us a good show when we came to town. Unfortunately something else came up and the show was passed off by them onto someone who both did not promote the show or even attend it. We ended up playing our set in the back of a pizza restaurant to about four people. Our Portland show was well-attended and organized, but our set was cut short about two songs in because of a noise complaint from a young mother across the street. In both towns however, we stayed with really nice people who made sure that we were well-taken care of for our meager efforts. Although the CD had been pressed and made with the intention of coming out in time for tour, a complication with the artwork resulted in us not receiving copies of our album that we were touring for until the very last week of tour. We had run out of merchandise before tour in the form of a bunch of silkscreened shirts and other items with a stylized (ie crappy) rendition of the band by myself and a cooler design with the aforementioned television, all of which sold out at the Santa Cruz show.

The midwest was somewhat of a blur, as relations within the band quickly deteriorated and recollections become painful. I can remember some really nice people offering us food and places to stay, like siblings Gabe and Stephanie in Portland, Oregan and Boise, Idaho. Gabe was someone that Funck had met beforehand, and was an enthusiast of hardcore music, but several days later while playing at a bar in Idaho we encountered his sister Stephanie in a stroke of random luck. Stephanie was beautiful and kind, and our time with her was an extremely warm and pleasant experience. Very sweet people. We played in Denver, Colorado at an art space, and in Salt Lake City at some sort of Christian pop-punk show. A couple of years later, out of the blue I got an email from a kid who attended that show, saying how it had a big impact on him. At the time I had been living in Vienna, Virginia after my home was flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, drinking roughly one bottle of wine a day and living a stark existence in a snowy landscape that was completely alien to me, having grown up with an almost winterless Louisiana upbringing.
In Chicago, we played yet another house show that was attended by Cassandra's very supportive and loving parents. After the show all of the bands stayed at their house and made ramen and toast. I remember one of the guys from a Norwegian band called Kaospilot saying that raw garlic was the "most brutal accent" that you could put on your noodles and toast. We completed the tour out on the East coast and by that point my desire to continue the group and my friendship with the others involved had grown strained to the point of snapping, never to fully recover. I had gone into the tour with an unflagging faith in the ideals of the group, and after a series of disappointments and question marks, my illusions disappeared. By the time we played in front of a packed house in the bottom level of the Knitting Factory in Manhattan, the band sounded better than ever, but the members were barely able to stand one another's presence, especially mine. We played the songs like clock-work, there could have been three people or three hundred and we would have played the same set, probably not caring much one way or the other. My memories of the second half of this tour are hazy and sporadic. I can remember having a phone conversation with my mother where she was stating to me that "maybe I would remember all this as the best time of my life." Very depressing to hear at that time, considering that I had given away all of my belongings and become a strange sort of hermit in preparation for the tour and was broke and hungry on the road. I felt so distant from everyone, most of all myself. I could look at the world around me and my own family and have absolutely no feeling whatsoever, because within myself there was nothing, no love or passion, just an angry animal lashing out with a psychic frenzy. I wrote and cultivated a story for the group that came from my own inner-most demons, with very little self-awareness of what I was tapping into within myself. After the cycle of creativity and disenchantment that came with the dissolution of the band, I found it very difficult to adequately conceptualize my focus of intent until after a very long process of self-analysis and self-transformation (which is still in progress). The inspiration simply did not come anymore in the same way, as my ideas grew my ability to dream grew beyond a patchwork quilt of words and phrases into a larger world of mental images and shared ideas that was larger and more complicated to convey. It was only years later, when I would begin to release my own material, that I was able to overcome this and find a more expansive and open-minded voice deep within myself.
The band had broken up well before the arrival of Hurricane Katrina (which is another story in and of itself, as my response to both events was to become completely irrational and insane), ending with a poorly attended show that happened during Mardi Gras opening for Eyehategod in the New Orleans central business district. I had invested so much of my time and effort into making the Faeries into my concept of something that I felt needed to exist, that I ignored glaring flaws within myself. These flaws were causing me to become an extremely hard person to deal with. I viewed myself as having a sort of insight into the world that others could not see, and that the mere existence of the Faeries was facilitated by divine order. In truth, it was the result of years of hard work that ended up in the refuse pile or cut-out bin. There were simply too many bands and too small of an audience, and the Faeries got lost as a brief anomaly among a flood of shinier and happier ensembles that worked harder and better. With the death of the band came the death of many of the ideals of my youth, and eventually a greater understanding of my own role in its failure.

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SMEAR CAMPAIGN - A basic personality type represents an incredibly horrible force in the universe. Whether you agree with their viewpoint or not, there is nothing that is accomplished by these people except for angering and upsetting the rest of us. No catharsis is delivered, simply a riling-up over issues that are vague and distant to the common person, but tempered with an immediacy of rhetoric designed to make it feel as if life and limb depends upon what is being said. There are always those types that seem as if they are embarking upon a smear campaign against you or others, against concepts or ideals. When someone comes to you with one of these, it is best to reject it.
The biggest smear campaign is the one being organized by the television industry, in which the advertisers and programmers conspire to convince people that they have no soul. They push a constant barrage of mundane ideas and toxic indoctrination (there is a reason why it is called programming) that creates a neurotic and vanity-obsessed audience. I can remember when the reality show first became a prominent form of entertainment. The reduction of life to a game show, a series of winners and losers, bleeds into a competitive and deception-heavy relationship between co-workers and fellow citizens. Humans are held to an inhuman standard of ideals, to be soulless caricatures on-screen desperately attempting to categorize themselves for the greater good of the pack. Left to rot in the wilderness, the loser becomes the closest position for the viewer to relate to in the fast-paced entertainment world.

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FONZIE SCHEME/FONZARELLI DYNAMIC - I always wondered what was up with that guy Fonzie. Although I have been recently informed that he held a job as an auto mechanic, his role as old-man/teenager in the life of the family that he lived with always puzzled me. He confuses the father of the house, is coddled by the mother, and acts as a misinformed djinn for the burgeoning adult persona that Ritchie attempts to live up to in the Happy Days series. My own youth was spent as a fan of the television series ALF, in which a furry puppet serves much the same purpose for the Tanner family as does the Fonz to the Happy Days family. Is he intended to be taken as a real character, or simply a symbol for nascent feelings with the surrounding family (and audience)? Both shows share the lulling introductory concept of an insipid opening theme song that attempts to add a sweet frosting to the dysfunctional living situations contained within. "Happy Days" assaults with its insistent lyrics and "ALF" bludgeons with a soothing saxophone presence. Both Alf (which stands for Alien Life Form) and the Fonz act as unhinged Id within the family dynamic, replying sardonically and subversively deriding the values of the family unit with a gentle, casual insinuation. The patriarch of the family, who 'brings home the bacon' in both situations acts as a direct buffer against the values represented by the house-guest, aligning the house-guest with new and unusual ideas that subvert the male-dominated "father knows best" dynamic, going against the grain of the values presented in previous generation of family sitcoms.

Alf's disruptive presence in the Tanner family seems in particular to work as a metaphorical representation of father Willie's internal demons, perhaps even acting as a physical manifestation for a hidden habit or vice. In an episode where Alf begins to express hostility toward the family through a ventriloquist's dummy, the idea of Alf as a voice for darker currents within the household consciousness is clear in a way that the laugh track has a hard time covering up. They are polite to each other outwardly, punctuated by the canned laughter of an audience whose members are long gone and possibly no longer alive. However the puppet represents a current of cynicism that underlies the families dealings with each other. The Fonz, in turn, is a living projection of James Dean, holo-graphically manifesting in the living room, dares the family to accept his rock and roll rebellion. Less of a person than an archetype come to life, Arthur Fonzarelli comes to represent the Dionysian abandon represented by the 45 rpm 7-inch singles playing on the jukebox during the opening credits. His is the rebellion that is necessary in challenging the family dynamic, contained within a controllable archetype that provides outlet for these natural rejections of the stilted nature of the suburban lifestyle.

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JASPER THE CAT - Jasper lived at my parents house from around the time I was first a teenager until just this year. He was a light-colored little fellow with a strong presence and majestic face, named after a town in Texas that my brother had recently driven through. Jasper was often at odds with a deranged stray siamese cat that lived in the area, whom my wife Vanessa and I dubbed "Smoky Cat" due to her gray and smoky exterior. Jasper would take long walks away from the house, going far off into the night and returning early in the morning. Usually my dad woke up around sunrise, and Jasper would be there to come inside, eat, and have his time among the family. Vanessa and I would walk over to the nearby Saint Joseph's Abbey and Seminary College and find Jasper in the woods, having followed us all the way out from the house about ten city blocks down a dark road. He was a mysterious cat who always seemed to be up to something.
My dad first discovered Jasper at his counter-top shop, a small kitten with an infected wound in his side. When brought to the doctor he emitted a small purr and it was decided that he would come home. For the first couple days of his life at the house he lived in a bucket and was kept disinfected so that the large hole in his side could heal up. He quickly assimilated with the family dog and became a part of the family within the time of a year. I moved out of my parents house not too much later after that, but when I returned Jasper was always there to greet me, usually walking up to me and meowing as soon as I got out of my vehicle. Apparently he once attacked a German Shepard by jumping on its face and clawing it until it ran away.

One day, I looked out the window of my old bedroom and saw Jasper laying in front of my truck in the hanged man position of the Tarot. I remembered finding it significant at the time but did not see any particular meaning in it at the time. I can also recall a specific instance in which Jasper held my hand with his paw, and I had the intense feeling that cats had some sort of shared memory or concept of the importance of holding hands to humans. His little paw-fingers wrapped around mine in what seemed like an attempt to share with me some knowledge or experience. I often feel this sort of sadness expressed by looking into the eyes of my feline companions, where it seems as if they want to tell us something important, but simply cannot in a comprehendable manner.

One Saturday night Jasper went away and never came back. He had grown quiet in the past year or so, making a small croak or chirp in the stead of his usual expressive bleat. We had wondered if he caught some sort of bug and just never recovered. The last time I saw him he had a very reserved and determined appearance, very deliberately coming up to me making sure that I told him goodbye on my way out. He looked slightly disappointed at me on my way out, and when I think about it, I wish that I would have sat out there with him a little bit longer.

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SEE YOU NEXT TIME.
Hey, you got a problem? Or advice, Mr. Smart Guy? Or maybe you're just looking for a friend? Take it up with me, Joseph Thomas Gates, right here: harshhumanignorance@gmail.com