MY GOAT

Dissolution Of The Body And The Harsh Noise Aesthetic: The Music Of Macronympha

2012-11-09T15:09:00.002-08:00

The Dissolution of the Body and the Harsh Noise Aesthetic

One of the most influential and important artists from the world of noise and experimental music is American tape noise auteur Rodger Stella. His work in the 1990s with the projects Macronympha and One Dark Eye pioneered many styles and tropes that are still being emulated to this day. The relentless and exploratory nature of the music is defined by a diet of pulp literature, underground cinema, and the twin worlds of jazz and experimental electronic music. Creating many sounds on his own using stringed instruments, synthesizers, and a variety of pedals, Stella's signature style is identified by the physical manipulation of tape media in order to tap into alternate vistas of sonic development. The unique editing and manipulative style of his work is a trademark that continues to this day, although the subject matter and aesthetic of his work has constantly changed and evolved over the years.
Due to the clandestine nature of the underground world of noise releases, many projects that bear the unmistakable artistic stamp of Rodger Stella have not properly received the deserved credit for his immense contribution. His ability to physically cut up and manipulate magnetic analog tape, using recording machines and players as actual instruments, bridges a certain gap between early tape music and modern "noise" aesthetic (similar to the American noise artist Aaron Dilloway). In order to properly document Stella's work over the years, it is important to look at it in historical context. In the early 1990s, the underground music scene was ruled by post-punk and grunge, with the Sub Pop slacker aesthetic dominating much of the diy zine world. Along with associate Joseph Roemer, Stella founded Macronympha as an avenue for the experimental tape collage and noise music that he was creating solo as well as for the collaborative sessions with Roemer. The duo began the label Mother Savage Noise Productions as an avenue for the release of their work, which was of little interest to the labels heavy in the rock-and-roll dominated scene at the time. The duo released a flood of cassette tapes and LP sides of harsh noise throughout the 1990s, with Roemer as the primary public voice of the group and Stella quietly behind the scenes pushing the limits of cassette noise and analog editing techniques.
Stella's involvement in analog tape manipulation comes directly from his interest in film. In Macro's birthplace of Pennsylvania, Stella attended film classes taught by a DIY filmmaker who was an associate of "Night Of The Living Dead" director George Romero. Here he learned many of the techniques of physical tape manipulation that have become trademarks in his output. Roemer's sonic contribution to Macronympha was a constant drive toward extremity and over-the-top wall of sound, whereas Rodger's input defined the very soul of the "cut-up" and loop based aspect to the groups' dynamic. Together, their joined influence created one of the most influential entities of the noise genre. The name itself reflects an interest in colonialism and the history of the caucasian race in relation to other groups of humans (a "macronympha" is a colonial-era term from a section of the female genetalia of a specific African tribe). Throughout the groups' original run through the 1990s, their material covered a variety of subjects that have continued to dominate the world of noise to this day: the subjugation of women, genocide, street crime, brutality toward the lower classes and the socially unfit, the derangement of misfits, drug culture, racism, and chaos writ large. Similar to the work of contemporaneous gangsta rappers and heavy metal artists, Macronympha reflected and magnified the darkest aspects of the social realities of the time as a point of personal catharsis. It is worth mentioning that Macronympha (especially specifically via Roemer) was at this time in touch with other artists (particularly in the USA and Japan) who were exploring similar realms in content and sound. In particular, Black Leather Jesus and C.C.C.C., who both carry strong themes in their work of bondage and unconventional sexuality, carried a strong unified current with the powerful aesthetic that Stella and Roemer had developed.
During this time, the group performed live as a duo with several others, and there have continued to be additional members of Macronympha throughout the years. In an interview published in the magazine Bananafish during this time, it is made clear by the duo that additional members besides the two of them are more of hired players than actual performers- the core contribution was solely Stella and Roemer. In 1994, Stella for the first time released some of his solo material under the name One Dark Eye. The material on "Transmissions Of Fistulae Auris" reflects a drive toward a more ambient and textured feel, a less over-the-top approach than Macro that would point the way toward Stella's later solo work. "Transmissions" was recently re-issued in a Stella-approved form on Mikko Aspa's Industrial Recollections label (which is still in print and easy to acquire). This is some of Rodger's earliest solo material, and some of the sounds turn up in his later work, re-occurring sonic imprints that shine clearly throughout the discography of the various groups that Stella has been associated with. Around this same time, a similarly spaced-out vibe can be felt on the Macro release "Insemination Bath / Radio For The People" (released on the label of the British weirdo/power electronics ensemble Smell and Quim). Around this time, Rodger was performing somewhat regularly on a local radio show doing improvised electronic performances, and the "Insemination Bath" release presents Macronympha within the context of live performance, a cosmic convergence of aggressive and evolving noise material.

1995 was an important year for Macronympha. The German industrial label Praxis Dr. Bearmann released one of the definitive documents of the group, an LP named for their hometown "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." A landmark release in the noise genre, the album typified what became the standard aspects of the "harsh noise" genre for years to come: scrap metal-based noise collage, harsh wall of sound, screaming feedback, and transgressive subject matter (words and imagery offensive to the average listener). An oversized foldout LP sleeve (in a similar style to those of the anarch-punk group Crass, but larger than the usual LP sleeve) with stark black and white presentation folds out to reveal an enormous photograph of a lynching victim. The track titles for the release seem to be taken from an ancient book on racial distinctions, the starkly non-P.C. track titles reflecting an era of stark division in the classifications of individual humans. Musically, the record is dominated with the sort of metal-sheet sampling and harsh loop work that typifies the sound of Rodger Stella's work, but presented with the stark aesthetic and antisocial demeanor that defines the Joe Roemer aesthetic. Together, they combine to create one of the most disturbed and overwhelmingly stark vinyl documents of all time, in no small part to the powerful editing and sonic prowess of Stella. Many hours of intensive layering and multi-tracking went into the creation of this release, making Stella an unsung hero in the highly competitive world of "harsh noise" and especially metallic-based noise work. The truly Industrial nature of this release owes itself to the tireless work and development of a unique and individualized harsh voice through the constant work and effort of Stella. Also this same year, Stella turned in the Macronympha contribution to RRRecords "Recycled" series, a strong noise work in an of itself that also reflects (via samples) Stella's interest in both video editing and underground cinema. Together, "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" and "Recycled" provide an amazing look into the larger aesthetic and aim of this controversial and important noise group.
During the following year, Stella and Roemer embarked on a collaboration with Japanese noise artist Thirdorgan called O.V.M.N. The moniker of the group was short for "Optimum Volume Maximum Noise." Their first self-titled cassette was issued in 1996 and has since been reissued on cassette by Rodger Stella and compact disc again by Mikko Aspa's Industrial Recollections label... the CD edition is readily available. Strangely, this project and One Dark Eye have both been attributed to being solo projects of Roemer rather than Stella, although historical documentation and physical evidence (ownership of masters, individual live accomplishments etc) shows that One Dark Eye is and always has been the solo project of Rodger Stella, and that O.V.M.N. indeed originated as a collaborative cross-cultural effort between Macro and Thirdorgan. Both of these projects show the immense reach of Stella's worldview and output, and 1996's "Manic Depression" by One Dark Eye has recently been reissued on CD by the Swedish Ljud and Bild label run by Sewer Election's Dan Johannsen. Going even further into morose ambient atmospheres, "Manic Depression" leaves behind the harsh purity of Macro and instead explores bizarre and off-putting cut-ups, cartoonish variations of kosmische insanity. The release has the feel of being stranded on an alien vessel, piloting through uncharted territory to an uncertain fate. For Macronympha itself, it was an experimental year typified by these collaborations and the amazing, jazz-influenced release "Boroque" one of the only Macro releases to feature live drums in conjunction with the free-form noise aesthetic that the group is known for. A truly odd and engaging release recommended to fans of Stella's later more 'out-there' material.
An orientation toward space and leaving behind the human body has long been an important meditation from the works of Rodger Stella. In 1998, he essentially left the group by moving out to the West Coast for the following several years... at this time he gave Roemer a box of cassettes of material that Roemer would continue to rework and reconfigure, at times releasing end result as his own solo material. This seems to be the result for much of the confusion relating to the creation and origination of much of the Macronympha catalog. The editing and physical aspect of Stella's contribution cannot be ignored and constitutes much of the basis of the group. Unfortunately, there is further deception on many of the Macronympha and related releases from the years of 1998-2005, where even recordings that are entirely Stella are credited to Roemer and other individuals (such as Tim Olivera and Liz Fox) who actually were in no way physically present for the original recordings. This has caused much confusion about the authorship of many of these releases, but recent reissues by the aforementioned labels such as Industrial Recollections and Ljud and Bild (as well as a Trash Ritual reissue of "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" featuring extended mixes from Stella's original masters) have begun to set the record straight in regards to who exactly has been behind this amazing back catalog of recordings.
While in California, Stella continued to record and evolve in his musical interests, becoming adept at the theremin and branching out significantly into analog electronics. He re-emerged into the recorded music sphere in 2006 as both a solo artist and a member of the Birmingham, Alabama-based group Hollow Bush. In 2006-2007 several collaborative efforts involving Tennessee noise artist Leslie Keffer were released in small editions, largely consisting of Stella remixing Keffer's original material. Around this same time, Stella performed as part of Macronympha for an infamous 2006 performance at No Fun Fest that amounted to a large crowd of people freaking out over a repeating volley of harsh sounds based around Stella's "Death Loop." The performance is significant in both the attention that it gave to Macro as well as to world of noise at large. Also participating in the group during this historic and landmark noise set were many of a younger generation of noise musicians, including members of the astounding group 16 Bitch Pile-Up and solo power electronics pioneer Prurient. At the same time, Stella's group with Bryan Martin called Hollow Bush was recording severe harsh wall of noise material on labels like Trash Ritual and Hanson Records. Hollow Bush has an approach that definitely has some similarities to Macronympha, but perhaps is more refined and universal in its overall reach and aesthetic.
In many ways, the overall feel of the early cassettes "Negative Line" and "Wrong Hole" by Hollow Bush carries on both the feeling of cosmic one-ness and the wall of noise aesthetic of O.V.M.N. in a truly major way. Any fan of the work of O.V.M.N. (or Macro for that matter) is seriously missing out by not listening to these amazing cassettes, each one is about thirty minutes apiece of corrupted wall minimalism from an intensly obsessed and personal perspective.
2007-2008 was a really big time for Rodger Stella music. Mike Connelly, member of Wolf Eyes and Failing Lights, released Stella's amazing "Foucault Zombie" solo recording on vinyl LP, as well as a Macronympha double-LP coming out on the Premier Sang label of France composed almost entirely of Rodger Stella solo material. Also in this year, Hollow Bush performed an historic live collaboration with free jazz musician Arthur Doyle that is documented on a DVD released on Nate Young and Alivia Zivich's AA Records. It is a live recording based around vocal and saxaphone contributions from the elderly Birmingham jazz legend reconfigured in a live context by Martin and Stella of Hollow Bush. The stark nature of the recording is offset by Zivich's bizarre psychdelic video editing on te DVD presentation, with the obfuscation of imagery via beautiful chaos a major re-occurring feature through her video art. The collaboration between Stella and Nate, Alivia, and Steve Kenney's electronic group Demons became and inevitablity, resulting in a short tour ending with an historic No Fun Fest performance opening for German kosmische musik legends Cluster in New York. This four-piece ensemble of Demons featured Stella on the theremin, as well as the tradition Demons lineup of Young and Kenney on Katrina-damaged synthesizers and Zivich on video projection detail. It was around this time that Stella began to reissue his Macronympha works in their original mixes on his reformed version of the Mother Savage Noise Productions label. Although Roemer has publicly decried these releases, they are the most authentic Macro documents that you will find, the authentic original audio edits dubbed for you in real time by the actual originator of the majority of the sounds on all of the famous releases. The 2000-era Mother Savage cassette re-issues are an enormous gift to the listening public, a bizarre anomaly akin to Sun Ra or John Coltrane dubbing original copies of their material in an aesthetically beautiful presentation. If you can find any recent cassettes on the Mother Savage label, it is a perfect way to experience the most authentic presentation of the Macronympha works (which have often been presented as incorrect and far too in-the-red mixes that obscure Stella's intricate cut-up compositions).
Throughout 2008, several labels released material by Stella that reflected an intense and personalized look into experimental electronic work. The hour long "R.S." tape on Nazot was reissued on CD by Chocolate Monk and contains some of Stella's most hypnotizing and driving material to date. This release is porbably the one that should be acquired for an immediate understanding of what is going on exactly with the modern Stella aesthetic. In 2010, Stella reissued the early cassette wall-noise sessions that were recorded for the O.V.M.N. project as "II" and "III" on Mother Savage, with "III" seeing a vinyl reissue on the excellent Urashima label of Italy. In more recent times, Stella has collaborated with Kites for an endless-loop LP and contributed two hours of Dub remix work of minimal composers Steve Riech and Terry Riley as well as an assortment of German experimental rock artists for a double-cassette release on the excellent Second Layer label out of the UK. Recently, Joseph Roemer of Macronympha has announced a reformation of the group involving Nick Painter of the excellent project Trogpite, as well as a collaboration under the moniker MACRO with Canadian harsh noise wall pioneer Sam McKinlay (The Rita), both groups sans Stella. Roemer also plays in a heavy metal/hard rock group called Casual Approach. Stella continues to perform his own brand of cosmic minimalism live, continuing to strive forward with the same intensity as always, including a recent 2012 tour of Europe and the Northeastern United States. A major element of Rodger's work has been the destruction and dissolution of the physical form, and the nature of our bodies transformation beyond matter into a purely spiritual form that will manifest and travel through space. As it is examined from a larger perspective, on can easily see how Macronympha, One Dark Eye, O.V.M.N., Hollow Bush, and Stella's current and future projects all fit into a larger attempt at understanding the meaning and purpose behind our fleshy sphere.

TIMELINE OF SOME IMPORTANT MUSIC BY RODGER STELLA
Macronympha releases are largely collaborative with JOE ROEMER and some others, and Hollow Bush is a collaboration with BRYAN MARTIN.
(Some of this stuff is way out of print and otherwise unavailable.)

1991 Macronympha - Insane Torture Device
1992 Mother Savage - Big Bang Drum Theory, Macronympha - Physical Chaos
1993 Two Macronympha/Grey Wolves collaborations (one with Sudden Infant)
1994 One Dark Eye - Transmissions Of Fistulae Auris, Macronympha - Insemination Bath / Radio For The People
1995 Macronympha - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Macronympha - Recycled Music
1996 O.V.M.N. - Optimum Volume Maximum Noise, One Dark Eye - Manic Depression, Macronympha - Baroque
1997 Macronympha - Amplified Humans
1998 Macronympha - Deconstructions and the Layered Sound Beneath The Surface
2002 Macronympha - Membranes and Black Holes
2005 Macronympha - Live Greatest Hits 1993
2006 Rodger Stella and Leslie Keffer - Remixes Brine and Devastates, Hollow Bush - Negative Line, Macronympha - Mugwump Reformer Mixes, Macronympha - Live At No Fun Fest
2007 Rodger Stella - Foucault Zombie, Rodger Stella - Death Loop Cut, Rodger Stella and Leslie Keffer - Brine Remix, Hollow Bush - Null-A Pt. 1, Arthur Doyle + Hollow Bush / Demons / Drug Knives, Hollow Bush - Wrong Hole, Macronympha - Cut-Ups, Drones, and Other Weird 1993-2007
2008 R.S. - R.S., Rodger Stella - The Electric Zodiac, Rodger Stella and Kites - Negative Moon, Hollow Bush - The Harmonic Module Revealed, Hollow Bush + Sick Llama - Wavering Uncertainty
2010 O.V.M.N. - II, O.V.M.N. - III
2011 Rodger Stella - Kosmische Dub + Reich/Riley, Rodger Stella and Kites - Interior Moon

Rainy Days And Mondays: Living With Jeffrey Dahmer

2012-11-09T14:51:00.001-08:00

The Life Of Jeffrey Dahmer

RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS: THE LIFE OF JEFFERY DAHMER

PART ONE: THE EARLY YEARS

When serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer went to trial in the early 1990s for his infamously antisocial lifestyle, the culture at large 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, and plastered with photographs of the actions that led to this state. His refrigerator famously contained human remains prepared as food, and as well as entire heads frozen for preservation. His collection and consumption of human beings 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 relatable 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 Jeffrey 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.
Jeffrey 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, Jeffrey 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.

"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..."
- "Goodbye To Love" by The Carpenters.

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."
- "Superstar" by the Carpenters

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 discomfort and distance between the two men in that moment shows a great deal about the relationship between the two men. Jeffrey 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, Jeffrey 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. Jeffrey 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 long-suffering 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 Jeffrey in becoming a more successful predator in what would become his over-archingly 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 Jeffrey 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 Jeffrey Dahmer.
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.

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 Jeffrey 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.

PART TWO: JEFFREY JOINS THE ARMY

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

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 Jeffrey 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.

"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 below 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 Jeffrey to his own devices while making off with Jeffery's brother David. Although Jeffrey 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 Jeffrey 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. Jeffrey 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 Jeffrey'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 Jeffrey 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." - Jeffrey 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 Jeffrey 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.

JEFFREY 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

Jeffrey 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, Jeffrey 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, Jeffrey 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.

PART THREE: THE MILWUAKEE DATING SCENE

"I found a (dead) dog, and cut it open just to see what the insides looked like, and for some reason I thought it would be a fun prank to stick the head on a stake and set it out in the woods. And brought one of my friends back to look at it and said I’d stumbled upon that in the woods. Just for shock value." - Jeff Dahmer.

It is a misconception that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer tortured and killed small animals as a child. Although torture and murder of smaller creatures is not uncommon behavior in the youthful activities of some sadists and sociopaths, Dahmer himself was both scientifically curious about deceased animals and altruistically inclined to help the injured or harmed. One night, while a very young Jeffrey Dahmer and his father Lionel were out bike-riding together (Dahmer was so young that he had just moved past riding a tricycle), Jeffrey spotted a nighthawk that was injured and lying on the ground. They took the bird of prey home and Jeffrey himself cared for it, nurturing the creature back to health and releasing it back into the wild with his parents. The boy recalled a feeling of pride and happiness at being able to nurture the creature back to life, finding joy in his ability to help another living being. At the age of four, he went under the knife in a painful operation for a double hernia that had him asking his mother if the doctors had removed his genitals (do the the excessive pain that he was feeling down there). He became sullen and withdrawn at this point, a characteristic that had not been observed in him before this point and which would remain with him to his final days. Not long after being cut apart by doctors, Jeffrey became fascinated with some animal bones that were swept from under his parents house by Lionel. Dahmer examined the bones with such an intensive curiosity that his father thought that the young man might have a future in medical or scientific fields. The boy described the bones as being "like fiddlesticks." Most of his childhood was spent in solitude, and the games that he would play with friends involved themes that would echo with Dahmer's solitary nature. In particular, "Infinity Land," a game where stick figures floating in an existential space send each other spiraling into an abyss (once they come into contact with one another), eerily echoed Dahmer's adult interests. He would draw this game on a piece of paper and play it with classmates during his youth. It would be during his 25th year of life that he would put his games to practice, spiraling through a world that would be for a time his own private Infinity Land.

"Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men, but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." - Charles Darwin

Dahmer's time in the military was ultimately fruitless. He obviously learned a great deal during this experience, especially in regards to the technical functions of the human body as they relate to his training to be a medic. After a discharge and some hazy events occurring in southern Florida upon his arrival back into America, he found himself living at his grandmother's house in Wisconsin, working the late shift at the Ambrosia Chocolate Company full time. Multiple arrests relating to drunk and disorderly behavior led the young man to seek solace in his grandmother's church, becoming "born again" and aligning himself with the Christian religion openly for the first time since his youth. He sought to once again be a "good boy," to overcome and move past the indiscretions that were already committed (including at least one murder and an alleged series of rapes while in the military) and look to Jesus Christ for his own personal salvation. However, like a shirtless hitchhiker on the side of the interstate, Dahmer's urges constantly flagged him down and attempted to pull him away from his newfound attempt at religious conservatism.

Jeffrey discusses his first murder, committed shortly after finishing High School:
"I was driving back home, after drinking; and I wasn’t looking for anyone but, about a mile away from the house, there he was. Hitchhiking along the road. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He was attractive; I was attracted to him. I stopped then passed him and stopped the car and thought, “Well, should I pick him up or not?” And I asked him if he wanted to go back and smoke some pot, and he said, “Oh, yeah.” And we went into my bedroom, had some beer, and from the time I spent with him I could tell he wasn’t gay. I, uh, didn’t know how else to keep him there other than to get the barbell and to hit him, over the head, which I did, then strangled him with the same barbell... I was very frightened at what I had done. Paced the house for a while. Ends up I did masturbate... After the army, after working for about a year in Miami. When the rest of the family was away, while they were at work, I opened up the drainage pipe, took the bones, smashed them into small pieces scattered them in the underbrush."

It is at this point in his life, around a quarter of a century old and living in relative solitude with his grandmother in peaceful Wisconsin, that Dahmer first began to experiment with picking up men at gay clubs, local bathhouses and "bookstores." It is not uncommon for "men's spas" and workout centers to double as meeting places for discreet homosexual activity to occur- in the days before AIDS this was especially widespread. Often an "adult bookstore" would have as it's main attraction a series of "glory holes" or booths where men could have discreet sexual activity with one another. Dahmer would frequent these locations during this time of his life, completely inexperienced in the world of "cruising." He found it to be a cold and frightening place. Lonely people searching for companionship, unable to meet outside of a dehumanizing and pleasure-based anonymous structure, under which the poor souls simply show up achieve orgasm and go on their depleted way. This was not enough to satisfy Dahmer, who desired to have companionship for longer periods of time. He wished to be close to another in a way that was unfathomable to many of his partners, deep within himself seeking to keep them as servants and sexually pleasure himself with their internal organs. As a holdover from a youth spent dissecting animals, and as a result of a burgeoning sexuality developing at that time, Dahmer had developed a paraphilic association with sexual stimulation and the internal organs. Something within him sought to make a sexual fetish out of the idea of a taking apart a human body and pleasuring himself with the contents. Through a desire beyond his control, Dahmer found himself compelled to transform into the "monster" unfathomable to those around him that he became. He must have at times cursed a God who supposedly loved him so for giving him desires that were beyond explanation to the poor boy. It was a compulsion that would remain secret until he was finally caught, but until then Dahmer lived a fascinating internal world, fluctuating between self-suppression and reveling in his desires. This is a common contradiction in American sexuality, the desire to "binge and purge," and for Dahmer it was a life-long struggle with an aspect of guilt and sympathy that he did feel within himself. In order to deal with this, he tended to view his compulsions as coming from an "other" outside of himself, a personification of evil that led him to commit acts of violence and morbidity that would go against the prevailing moral codes around him.

Dahmer on his awareness of his own sexuality:
"In the township where I was at, homosexuality was the ultimate taboo. It was never discussed, never. I had desires to be with someone, but never met anyone that was gay, that I know of; so that was sexually frustrating."

In the bathhouses and adult bookstores that Dahmer frequented, he found the sexual satisfaction he desired from the bodies of others, but not the companionship. It was a repeating cycle- shame would push Dahmer to a point where he was unable to make lasting relationships. He could not get clse to any of his partners for mutual fear of being discovered, among other reasons. Dahmer, for his part, never let go of her murderous desires and past, which he would have to keep secret from any potential boyfriend that he would try to associate with. The literal skeleton in Dahmer's closet was a huge barrier in his being able to be close to another human being. Several times, Dahmer came home with young men who would spend the night, to the judgmental curiosity of his grandmother. Although he would excuse himself by saying that they were partying and his companions simply had too much to drink and nowhere else to go, but his family was suspicious of Dahmer's nighttime activities for a variety of reasons. At one point, Dahmer's grandmother Catherine found a complete human mannequin in Dahmer's living space that he seemed to be sleeping with. She was greatly disturbed by this and asked him to remove it, which he complied, saying that he had just taken it "as a prank" and was having "some fun" with it, "nothing weird." In reality, he was using the dummy to live out the sexual fantasies that would cost the lives of at least sixteen more young men by the beginning of the next decade. Dahmer was in the process of developing what would become an extraordinarily insatiable appetite.

"PARAMOUNT PULLS 'BODY PARTS' ADS: (The) Paramount Pictures Corporation says it has pulled television ads for the upcoming horror movie 'Body Parts' in the Milwaukee region after this week's gruesome discovery of at least 11 dismembered bodies in a local apartment. In addition, Wisconsin's largest chain of movie theaters was said to be pulling the movie that is scheduled to open nationwide next Friday." - from a July 26, 1991 Los Angeles Times article by David J. Fox.

In reality the mannequin could not possibly satisfy his sexual desires, and Dahmer found himself frequenting the bathhouses more and more often. He found that he could rent a locker and have a room to himself, and drug a sexual companion with sleeping pills in order to utilize his body for the night. Dahmer was much more interested in achieving his own personal enjoyment from a situation than developing any sort of lasting friendship. In the darkness, and with the aid of drugs, many men became unconscious lovers to a man who would go down in infamy as one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. Although Dahmer was attractive enough to get "dates," he desired an unconscious, possibly even unwilling sexual partner. Because he could not have his ultimate desire, the insides of his victims for his pleasure, he instead comforted himself with an illusion of "complete control" enacted through the unconscious but still-breathing body of his victim. He ultimately desired to create an indifferent, zombie-like sexual companion as his ideal partner, someone who could neither protest nor judge the slightest whim of the sexually unsatisfied lover found in Jeffrey. It was during this period of time that Dahmer began to obsess more intricately on the innards and body parts of his sleeping companions. After acheiving orgasm, he would spend long periods of time listening to the heartbeat and digestive sounds of his sleeping companions, reveling in his complete control over their body. One day, after making a habit of this, Jeffrey drugged one of his partners a little too heavily, and the paramedics had to be called. Although charges were not pressed against him, Dahmer found himself barred from any similar establishment in the area. He had severely messed up a somewhat comfortable situation, and finding adequately submissive partners to his specifications for compliance would prove to be far more difficult to Jeffrey from this point onwards. It is for this reason that Dahmer would find himself once again compelled to take the life of another, a bubbling rage beneath the surface waiting to show itself to the world around him. Dahmer said that he began to fetishize "the excitement and anticipation of meeting a stranger in the night," almost exclusively from the perspective of one stalking prey. Dahmer saw himself as a man apart from society, an inhuman sexual predator.

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we would expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” - Charles Darwin

Dahmer had other hobbies during this time as well. After reading an obituary of a young man that he deemed attractive, Dahmer decided to visit the funeral services of the cute boy whose picture he saw in the paper. At the event, he found the young man so attractive that he had to relieve himself onanistically in the men's room of the funeral parlor. He waited for nightfall and attempted to dig up the newly-buried corpse for his own pleasure (in order to abate his urges to kill), but alas the ground was frozen and beyond puncturing by Dahmer's shovel. In sadness and rejection (even from the dead), Dahmer turned morosely back to his grandmother's house, dissatisfied and filled with confused energies. Dahmer began to form an obsession with the character in "Return Of The Jedi" of the Emperor, particularly in the form of the Emperor's powerful thrall over Darth Vader and his son Luke Skywalker. Dahmer found the scenes of the Emperor torturing Luke to be extremely erotic and triggering to urges to have power over other men. It was in September of 1986 that these urges would boil up in a recorded incident of public sexual exposure on the record of Jeffery Dahmer. Although he had exposed himself to children in the past, this time he was most assuredly masturbating in the presence of two 12-year old boys near a riverbank. Amazingly, his charges were dropped to "disorderly conduct" and he was sentenced to one year of probation. Dahmer's father was extremely disappointed in his son and believed that from this point on there was no hope for the young man except to be a ne'er do well with violent and pedophilic inclinations.
It should be obvious from Dahmer's actions that his flirtation with Christianity was again waning. Much like in his childhood, Dahmer would spend long hours brooding and thinking, staring into the air and floating mentally in an existential limbo. Dahmer lived an intense and private inner world that he did not believe others could tap into or understand, and surrounded by the hypocrisy and fake kindness of those around him he assimilated into adult society with a similar facade of normality. He imitated the world around him, becoming a passive enigma who simply wished to please on the surface level. Beneath this, he operated as his own independent nation with his own set of rules, waging a quiet and subversive war against the status quo and simmering in hatred and spite for humanity combined with a passionate desire to share some sort of intimacy with another. It seems that his urges were so overwhelming that he began to convince himself of various excuses for his behavior, feeling that he was hard-wired to sexual perversion and murder deep within himself. His probation put him in a position of subordinance that he despised, as he ultimately envied the authority and power of the police. He began to feel increasingly victimized, and perhaps in many ways abandoned by the aid of God and religion. He saw himself as an incurable sinner, one who had no choice but to satisfy his compulsions. It would be during this time of intense scrutiny from the law that Dahmer would commit his first admitted murder since hitchhiker Steven Hicks in 1978.

"Put them back, under the crawl space. Took the head, washed it off, put it on the bathroom floor, masturbated and all that, then put the head back down with the rest of the bags. Next morning we had a large buried drainage pipe, about ten feet long put the bags in there, smash the front of it down, and leave it there for about two and a half years." - Jeffery Dahmer describes the disposal of his first victim, hitchhiker Steven Hicks.

In the Hindu religious and philosophical system, there is talk of a demonic attachment that one can have with a particular sexual desire, where the indulgence therein will result in nothing less than the total spiritual and physical destruction of the individual. Driven to commit acts that they cannot explain or justify to others, the recipient of this parasitic desire obsesses over the concept until being driven to act out the script like a performer in a stage play, compelled by the sexual impulses stimulated by the parasite who attaches to the host and feeds from the sexual energies and subsequent guilt and feelings of remorse and depression after their expulsion. The act is repeated time and time again, until finally the actor is stopped by outside forces and decried as a monster by the local community. Many schizophrenics report hearing voices, commands from outside of their own consciousness to commit acts of deviancy from the norm, or for that matter compulsive violence. In many ways, we are all schizophrenics, compelled by voices that seem to come from outside of us that we must shut out or welcome, depending on our inclination. Perhaps these voices come from an inner compulsion, an ancient, Reptilian Brain aspect of fight or flight relating to early human survival that exists now in the form of whispers to our mind about the most horrible things imaginable. The "voices," the compulsions that convince an otherwise gentle and happy child to kick a dog or hurt their siblings out of curiosity. Children, onto adulthood, will often have playful, seemingly innocent impulses to suffocate and experiment with other living beings. It does not make it right, it just makes it "so." The foibles that make us human, that we must overcome in order to become ourselves, hopefully something greater than the total of our chemical makeup. It is our ability to decide that makes us culpable for our actions. Jeffrey Dahmer, for his part, was definitely not insane.
On November 15, 1987, Dahmer took a young white male named Steven Toumi from a gay club to a nearby hotel for some alone time. He had secretly put sleeping pills in Toumi's drink after convincing him to go to a hotel later. Jeffery Dahmer had very little trouble getting other men to come home with him, at the time he was a thin, good-looking young man who was very well-kept. He had on the surface a shy and sensitive demeanor that must have come off as quite endearing to many of the young men who went home with him, and in fact before this point had gone home with many others without incident (according to Dahmer's testimony). He claims that he awoke to find himself in Toumi's dead arms, the young man bludgeoned to death in the chest cavity by Jeffrey's fists during a drunken rage. Toumi likely woke up briefly from his drug-induced slumber to see Dahmer pummeling him to death, greedily reaching for the young man's internal organs. He claims that he was overcome with a desire to hold Toumi's heart in his hands (not unlike the villain in the then-recent "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom" film). He cleaned up the blood from the incident in a panic, even utilizing the assistance of the hotel help to get the body out of the hotel in a large suitcase (without their knowledge of the contents). It is an amazing feat that Jeffrey managed to consistently come to his senses and cover up his impulse actions in time to save himself from capture or suspicion of improper behavior. Although loneliness and depression would be the driving factors pushing Dahmer towards murder, a prevailing sense of calm and self-control enabled him to get away with his actions time and time again. He had woken up in shock at having committed murder yet again (despite his claims that he had not taken Toumi to the hotel with the intention of killing him), but very quickly regained his composure. Dahmer's youthful excursions in fantasy, and his ability as a youngster to skirt the rules and deceive for his own purposes, had seen the boy grow into a man able to fully justify any deception in order to get his way. God became more and more distant of a concept to Dahmer in these years, and his lack of perception that he would be punished by a higher power led him to believe that he was simply an evolved predator who existed for the purpose of exterminating others and living out his compulsions. Later in life, he remarked to authorities that he "should've just gotten a fish tank" instead of pursuing his early efforts at murder, suggesting that he viewed his human prey as entertainment. When he moved into his final apartment, he had purchased a fish tank that he populated with tropical fish, placing it on a long black table that he would later plan to use as part of an altar. He found a great deal of joy in the fish tank, but at the point that he acquired it he was sadly already on a compulsive path toward self-destruction. His desire and curiosity about life pushed him to become as close as he could with his companions, and something within him desired to be so physically close that it would in fact be impossible for his partner to survive. The sexual fascination with severed heads and innards, and the desire to be close to those things, made it impossible for Dahmer to have any hope of continuous sexual fulfillment from a partner. In order to satisfy his needs, his sexual partner must be killed.

"Lonliness is such a sad affair, and I can hardly wait to be with you again. What to say to make you come again, come back to me again..." - Carpenters, "Superstar"

With the body of the young man in his luggage, Jeffrey took the corpse back to his grandmother's house in a fit of lustful excitement. Unfortunately for him, Thanksgiving weekend was coming soon, and family was going to over at the house, leading Dahmer to store the body in the fruit cellar for a particularly anxious week. As the family got together and recalled stories of the past, Dahmer silently waited for the house to be empty again so that he could tend to his decaying would-be lover deep below their feet. The following Sunday, while his Grandmother went to church, Dahmer stayed home and made preparations for his long-awaited ritualistic deconstruction of the human body, which became an addictive, re-occurring practice for the next several years. His first step in the process was to remove the head from the body. This was a major part of Dahmer's personal sexual exploration. Although it is at times reported that his major sexual fetish involving the head was to physically use it as an object of pleasure against his genitals, in fact he seemed to get an even greater thrill from the actual act of simply pleasuring himself in front of the severed head as he observed it separate from the body, knowing that he was responsible for what he saw before him. Beheading is a symbol of power that goes back to ancient times, where power was determined by physical violence and beheading was the ultimate symbol of control over another person's body. Although Dahmer was lonely, he decided to overcome it temporarily by committing an ancient act of domination that was hard-wired into some subconscious, prehuman understanding of our physical relationship with the personal space of others. For this reason, the ritualistic removal of the victim's head is an extremely significant aspect of his domination of the chosen subject. He desired, deep within himself, to turn these people into victims in a greater manner, some form of eternal victimhood where he kept their skulls in a shrine and fed from their power. In this way, the murder of Toumi was ultimately a failure for Dahmer: he attempted to retain the skull of the victim, but due to deterioration it had simply crumbled into a multitude of pieces. This surely was incredibly disappointing to Dahmer. Upon his capture, he had shown authorities diagrams extrapolating on a plan to build an altar out of his victims remains (including several skulls and two human skeletons). When asked what he would do in front of the altar, Dahmer matter of factly stated "It was a place for meditation, where I could feel I was drawing power from an outside source... I was trying to get in contact with the spirits," also stating that it would be "...a place where I could feel at home." He interestingly didn't consider the prospect that local spirits he contacted might not be that happy with the man. The plan was rather elaborate, including ten human skulls and two complete skeletons, lit by atmospheric blue lighting and flanked by two griffin statues. The ideology behind the building of the altar is similar in spirit to statements made by the Zodiac killer, suggesting that he believed that those that he killed would live on as his slaves that he could contact from beyond death. When the puzzled investigators asked Dahmer who or what the altar would be in exultation of, he replied unhesitatingly, "Myself."

“Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” - Charles Darwin

It was at this point in the event, after masturbating in front of the severed (likely quite rotten) head of his unfortunate victim that Dahmer would move onto his second part of the menu, the guts. It is on public record, due to interviews with court-appointed psychiatrists, that Jeffrey Dahmer had a deep and abiding sexual attraction (generating from a young age) to the intestinal and coronary systems of the body. He was noted as a child and young man for his propensity for listening to the heartbeats and digestive tracts of his classmates in a way that seemed almost prurient, even for a young child. He operated then from a standpoint of naivete and a genuine desire to see "how things work," but even then the intensity and focus seemed to creep out his friends (of which there were not many). Perhaps this rejection led to his further curiosity/desire to transform others into part of his larger scientific exploration. For, whatever Dahmer abhorred in the prevailing authority, he greatly respected the institutions of science and the military (an avenue he attempted but could not ultimately stick with, much to his chagrin and familial shame). Toumi was to be the first in a series of exploratory executions that Jeffery would embark upon during his illustrious criminal career. Although the head had crumbled, he could still pleasure himself with the innards of the remaining corpse. An interesting fact about Steven Toumi, besides the fact that he is the second guy named Steven to be reported murdered by serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, is that his remains have never been found. The only reason that we know that Jeffrey killed the guy is that Dahmer himself gave a generous testimony in regards to Toumi's death. So here he is, Jeffrey Dahmer, literally deep within the large and small intestines of another human being in his grandmother's basement. He is having a blast, satisfying to the utmost degree the VERY SPECIFIC plan that his sexual drive had been encoded with. Keep in mind that this is a constant obsession which Dahmer has up to this point spent almost all of his time actively suppressing. Feeling deep within himself that he is hard wired to kill. Who must find pleasure in the intestinal tract of another human being. The small intestine of a human being is actually much longer and larger in mass than the "large intestine," an irony that the medically educated Dahmer must have found quite plain to observe during his moments of pleasure with the week-or-so-old body of the unfortunate and dearly departed Mr. Steven Toumi.

"…if a person doesn’t think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior, to keep it within acceptable ranges, that’s how I thought anyway. I’ve since come to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is truly God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – they are the only true God." - Jeffery explains how his understanding of atheism influenced the consummation of his desires to kill.

In January of 1988, despite his later claims that he killed men and not boys, Jeffery took home a 14 year old Native American boy named James Doxtator. He had promised the boy that he would pay him to watch videos together and take sexually explicit, which was perhaps his original intention. According to Jeffrey, he liked the boy so much that he wanted to "keep him." James was given sleeping pills and, shortly after passing out, was strangled to death in his sleep by Jeffrey. This was Jeffery's preferred way of murder because he seemed to dislike the idea of being looked at while committing the act of murder. His inmost desire was to administer a "painless" death to his prey, and to preserve them for as long as possible as his objects of pleasure. In fact, Dahmer is quoted as stating that at a certain point in his life that he trained himself to view people "simply as objects of pleasure." However, a sadistic intent to cause pain was not a part of this urge. For this reason, he sought to extinguish the life of his prey while unconscious, exerting his desires upon them once stricken of life (and therefore individuality). It seems as if he wished to pleasure himself with the empty shells of people he found beautiful, and that living spirits themselves were not desirable and simply to be set free. And set them free he did. James Doxator's skull once again suffered from a brittleness that made it unable to be kept by Dahmer. He realized that he would have to streamline the process if he was to be able to retain a skull for his personal collection in the manner that he so deeply desired. Like Toumi before him, Doxtators muscle and flesh were removed from bone through a process involving long hours in the basement experimenting with corrosive acid. After this somewhat lengthy process, the bones were pulverized in a frenzy, all evidence turned to dust. Dahmer became like some personalized mafioso god of death, greatly speeding up the rate of decay and deterioration and getting a personal cut for himself out of the deal. Dahmer's dealings with death would not leave him without his own fair share of personal hauntings, and the concept of "living with the dead" became part of his personalized fetish. He had such difficulty bringing himself around to disposing the bodies of these early victims for one simple reason: he loved the company.
Two months later, Dahmer finally finished his probation and decided that it was time to celebrate. For the first time in his life, Jeffrey hit the night life with the full intention of committing an act of murder. He met a young man in the doorway of a hangout called the Phoenix Bar. Not wasting any time, Dahmer invited him back to the house to hang out and fool around. After some consensual sexual activity, Dahmer drugged and strangled the young man in his sleep. For the first time, Dahmer had perfected his skin-removal process for the human head, diluting his skull-whitening bleach solution to leave behind an intact and non-brittle skull, proudly keeping the skull as an artifact. Not long after, Dahmer was stunned to see the face of the boy that he had murdered on a local newspaper reporting on a missing person story. It was only at this moment that Dahmer learned the young man's name: Richard Guerrero. Like the other men who met a similar fate from the hands of Dahmer, Guerrero's body was dispatched as efficiently as possible, keeping the boy's skull and disposing of the remains in the garbage. Jeffrey performed the task of putting out the garbage for his grandmother several times a week, and it was during these instances that he would dispose of extraneous parts of his victims, piece by piece.

GHOSTS

Dahmer's family was not completely blind to the bizarre goings on surrounding the now 27-year-old young man. His father had been making a point to visit the house, fearing that Dahmer was somehow up to no good. The grandmother Catherine repeatedly asked Dahmer about the horrible smells coming from the basement, which he would excuse with various explanations (such as spoiled food or an unattended cat litter box). At one point, she began to strongly suspect the credibility of his excuses, and after some prodding Lionel Dahmer arrived to investigate. He went into the cellar, likely instantly recognizing the stench of decay, and he discovered that parts of the floor were covered in a viscous, black liquid that shimmered in the basement light. Although it appeared thick and sticky like oil, the smell was a nauseating combination of rotten organic matter and chemicals. It must have appeared quite surreal to Lionel, to see this black shiny liquid with such a horrifying smell, completely out of the norm of anything that he had expected to find. Dahmer explained to his father that he simply was performing the same sort of experiments that he had done as a child with dead animals, dissolving their flesh and muscle to leave behind bones, and that this liquid on the floor was the result of that. Lionel accepted this explanation, but suspected that something deeply wrong was occurring under his mother's roof. The distance, the passive demeanor with which Dahmer's family faced one another was an impenetrable barrier to the exposure of the truth of Jeffrey's activities. An incident with Dahmer carousing with a drunken, drugged man at the house caused a family discussion about Dahmer's nighttime activities and his alcoholism. With his family bearing down on him, Dahmer would move out on his own for the first time in his life since he was expelled from the Army.

"Rituals such as these were common practices associated with necromancy, and varied from the mundane to the grotesque. Rituals in necromancy involved magic circles, wands, talismans, bells, and incantations.Also, the necromancer would surround himself with morbid aspects of death, which often included wearing the deceased's clothing and the consumption of unsalted, unleavened black bread and unfermented grape juice, which symbolized decay and lifelessness. Necromancers even went as far as taking part in the mutilation and consumption of corpses. These rituals could carry on for hours, days, or even weeks, leading up the eventual summoning of spirits. Often they took place in graveyards or other melancholy venues that suited specific guidelines of the necromancer. Additionally, necromancers preferred summoning the recently departed, citing that their revelations were spoken more clearly; this timeframe usually consisted of twelve months following the death of the body. Once this time period lapsed, necromancers would summon the deceased’s ghostly spirit to appear instead." - from the Wikipedia entry on Necromancy.

Jeffrey moved into an apartment in Milwaukee that was closer to his job at the chocolate factory. He brought with him several items that he would eventually plan to utilize in his planned shrine, including the skull of Richard Guerrero, a long black table, and two statues of griffins that represented to Dahmer a dark power that was guiding him through life. Dahmer was constantly under scrutiny, getting into trouble for a variety of petty crimes, while constantly eluding any suspicion of the nightmarish reality that he was living out. He believed that he was under the thrall of a demonic power that spoke to him through his thoughts and the media. In particular, he was deeply enthralled with the story of the Sith, the dark forces in the universe of the Star Wars films. Dahmer deeply identified with the character of the Emperor, and would watch a video tape of "Return Of The Jedi" with the same compulsive viewing as his tapes of Chippendales dancers and other male-centric pornography. It is worth noting that almost all of Jeffrey's admitted murders fit a certain physical body type. He was enthralled with the physique and structure of the male body, and in particular he seemed to prefer muscular and more well-built men, although an important aspect of his choice in prey was his ability to overpower them once it came down to Dahmer's increasingly ritualized procedure of capture and execution.

"He liked the way he moved. You know, whatever was in his mind at that time, he wanted Eddie and he said he just was going to - he was determined to get him." - Theresa Smith, sister of Edward Smith, after speaking face-to-face with a jailed Dahmer about her brother's murder.

Not long after moving into his new apartment, Dahmer made a very telling mistake. The newfound freedom of having his own apartment caused Dahmer to overstep his luck considerably, bringing home a fourteen year old boy named Sonsack Sinthasomphone for his usual offer of payment for taking nude photographs. Dahmer drugged the boy and, at a moment of indecision, found that he could not bring himself to kill the young Sinthasomphone. After listening to his stomach while sleeping, Dahmer awoke the boy and, inexplicably, sent him back home. Once Sinthasomphone arrived to his house, his clearly drugged state caused alarm to the parents, who brought him to an emergency room immediately. Doctors discovered that the boy had been given sleeping pills and sexually violated. Police arrested Dahmer at his job at the Ambrosia Chocolate Company, exposing his bosses and co-workers to an aspect of their fellow employee that was extremely unexpected and shocking. His house was searched by police thoroughly, but they failed to find the skull of missing person Richard Guerrero, which was hidden in the bottom part of a chest of drawers. Dahmer was finally, inexcusably exposed to his father as a homosexual and a pedophile. It was at this point that Lionel completely lost all hope in the idea of his son being anything more than a criminal and a sexual pervert. It is possible that somewhere inside him Lionel could imagine the truth of what was occurring, but that it was simply unfathomable to entertain. For her part, Dahmer's mother seems to have almost completely abandoned the young man after the divorce from Lionel, and the adult relationship between Jeffery and his brother David was non-existent. Dahmer was in jail at this point for several days until being released on bail ($2500) after pleading not guilty. It is possible that he faced negative repercussions for his prison status as a child rapist. While waiting for the trial to happen, Jeffery stayed with his grandmother again, deep in a state of shame and regret. Although he surely was relieved that no evidence of his murders was uncovered, the shame of being exposed for his pedophilic inclination (even just one small portion of his sexual life) weighed heavily upon him.

"MILWAUKEE ACTIVISTS ARE CONCERNED OVER HIGH PROPORTION OF BLACK VICTIMS. SOME CRITICIZE OFFICERS' RESPONSE: MILWAUKEE — The city's grief over a grisly murder spree was compounded Sunday by questions of whether authorities could have stopped the killer sooner and concerns that race played a part in the lack of responsiveness. 'What do you do when the people that are supposed to be protecting us are now letting us die?' demanded the Rev. LeHavre Buck, a black community activist and pastor of the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ... Dahmer, 31, has admitted killing and butchering 11 males in his apartment.
Nine of the victims were black and one was a 14-year-old Laotian boy, who was seen naked and bleeding on May 27 outside Dahmer's apartment." - from a July 29, 1991 Associated Press article.

Later, once his crimes were discovered and exposed to the world, Dahmer was asked why the majority of his victims were of African descent. Until the time of his murder by an incarcerated African-American male who believed that he was a reincarnation of Christ, Dahmer maintained in prison that he did not hate black people but was in fact fascinated with them. Much like the early European doctors examining the skulls of different African people and comparing them to those of deceased Europeans, Dahmer saw himself in a fine tradition of scientific exploration that he had embarked upon from a very young age. While Jeffrey was out on bail, Anthony Sears, on March 25th 1989, became the first to fit the soon-to-become-legend Jeffrey Dahmer victim profile: "young, athletic, muscular African American male." He dismembered the body at his grandmother's house, just like in the previous years. It must have been a comforting feeling to him, like cleaning the garage for the first time again in a year. Sears would be the last of his subjects to be exterminated and disposed of in that particular house. Jeffrey got on the phone with a local taxidermist in order to get proper instructions on the preservation of a head without it getting brittle. It seems that Guerrero's skull, once a prized possession of Dahmer's, had become brittle and useless to him. Also, Dahmer made the distinctive choice of preserving Sears' genitals as well, in his words keeping them "as a trophy." It seems that the preservation of the head and genitals of Sears was extremely important, and like many of the others Dahmer had sex with the corpse before dismembering it and disposing of the parts that were not to be kept. His necrophilic inclinations stemmed partially from a desire for total control over a body, but it is interesting that his inclination for complete control in this manner excluded the human presence, the life force of a victim. As much as he enjoyed listening to the living organs of others, it was the lifeless body that he craved. Sears' body (minus the head and genitals) was the last of Dahmer's companions to be put out with the garbage at grandma's house. Although there was an overpowering element of lust and desire to the crime, this one in particular, amidst the humiliation of being exposed as a pedophile and threatened with jail time, has the earmarks of a man lashing out in a distinct and fetishized manner.

Jeffrey discusses his time at High School:
"I was up visiting a friend’s, and was walking back home in the evening, and saw these three seniors, seniors in high school approaching. I just had a feeling that something was going to happen, and sure enough, one of them just took out a billy club and whacked me on the back of the neck. For no reason. Didn’t say anything, just hit somebody... And I ran."

Jeff kept Sears' head in a small locker with his belongings. Lionel at one point pried into Dahmer's possessions, drilling him on what was inside the safe. Dahmer, for his part, had been caught in possession of an illegal firearm by his father, who was perhaps worried about his son's violent inclinations. Dahmer lied to his father, saying that there was child pornography in the box and that he did not want his father to see it because it was "too upsetting." He then hid the head in a locker at his workplace. Due to his loyalty working the graveyard shift at the chocolate factory, he was allowed to keep his job, stating to his employers that he was not guilty of the charges. The head would remain in the work locker until Dahmer's return to work from his prison sentence for child sexual assault in 1990. Dahmer would later skin the head by hand, preserving the skull for use in his altar.

"I can feel your anger." - The Emperor from "Return Of The Jedi"

At his trial, Jeffrey was found to be delusional and unaware of many of the problematic aspects of his behavior toward Sinthasomphone, seeming to only believe that his crime was doing what he had done with a boy so young (for which he was extremely apologetic). He seemed completely unaware of the negative aspects of driving while intoxicated, drugging others, and picking up people in bars to offer them money in exchange for sexual favors, all of which were completely illegal activities that Dahmer did not seem to feel any recognition of guilt about before. His prosecutor saw him as a sexually deviant alcoholic who needed to be placed under probation as well as receive counselling for his alcoholism. In addition to this, he was in prison for a year under a work release program that enabled him to leave the jail for part of the day and continue working at the chocolate factory on his usual schedule. By doing this, the court ensured that Dahmer's locker would not be emptied, and the now-mummified head of Anthony Sears contained within would not be discovered.

"Everyone knows what happens to a child molester in prison. I don't know if that's what happened, but when he came out he was hardened, and he hated black people." - Dahmer's stepmother Shari.

During this prison stint, Dahmer was allowed a twelve-hour release during the Thanksgiving holiday, ostensibly to visit his family. Unable to deal with the pressures of a family meal, Dahmer instead chose to spend his time getting completely wasted. He blacked out and awoke to being sexually assaulted with a candlestick by a man that he did not know, after which he showed up back to jail late. After this, a miserable and depressed Dahmer successfully made a plea to the judge to be released several months early, telling the judge that he wished to be a productive member of society. Ironically, while stating that he was contrite for his crimes, he is quoted as saying "The world has enough misery in it without my adding more to it." It seems that a part of him did truly feel bad about harming children, perhaps due to the contested (by Jeffery himself) story that Lionel told of Jeffrey being molested by a family friend at a young age. Perhaps Dahmer was contrite and unwilling to create more people out there in the world like him, and from this point on he indeed stayed away from children (partly due to a court order banning him from their presence). He would remain on probation for the next few years, developing a close and even friendly relationship with his parole officer Donna Chester. His friendship and close consultation with officer Chester is astounding in that it would remain a constant thoughout the next few years, which would prove to be Jeffrey's most prolific period of serial murder. She saw before her a suicidal man, depressed and filled with deep remorse for his life. He had no friends or even light acquaintances, a lost soul in a world filled with people he could not relate to. She was one of the only people that he spoke openly with about his sexuality, displaying a deep sadness and self-loathing over his preference for men. Chester took pity on him and attempted to help him reconcile his urges, perhaps causing even further conflict within him.

924 NORTH 25TH STREET, APARTMENT 213

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” - Charles Darwin

After a brief transitional period back at his Grandmother's house, Dahmer moved into his final apartment in a heavily African-American populated neighborhood in a "bad area" of Milwaukee. He was the lone white man in a community that paid him little regard or notice. The owner of the apartment complex that he moved into was an African man who spoke with a strong accent and viewed his new tenant with suspicion, although he could not put his finger on exactly what about the young man seemed off to him. He, like many peripheral characters in Dahmer's life, has attempted to sell a book of his recollection regarding the man over the years. His relationship with his neighbors seemed to be defined by distance, suspicion, and fear of the mysterious stranger. In fact, shortly after moving into the apartment, it was robbed several times. In a particularly sad and telling incident, Dahmer took home a young man with the intention of drugging and killing him only to accidentally drink the drugged mixture that he had prepared for the young man. After passing out in front of his would-be prey, the man pilfered Jeffrey's pockets and robbed his apartment of a miniscule amount money and valuables contained within. Somewhere during this period of time, Dahmer came under the sway of two films that would be hugely influential to his thinking during his stay at Apartment 213. The first of these was a video-taped lecture on Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution. Dahmer would later state that this video completely changed his views on the idea of a creationist universe, and influenced him to believe that there was no God, and that our actions were simply a "survival of the fittest" where the weak were weeded out by the strong. Another piece of film that would be incredibly influential to Dahmer would be William Peter Blatty's adaptation of his own novel "Legion," which was titled "Exorcist III" by the studio that released it (due to the fact that Blatty's novel contained characters from his novel "The Exorcist" and one sequel had already been made. The character in the film of the Gemini Killer (played masterfully by Brad Dourif) would be extremely influential on Dahmer's thinking.

"Medieval practitioners believed they could accomplish three things with necromancy: will manipulation, illusions, and knowledge. Will manipulation affects the mind and will of another person, animal, or spirit. Demons are summoned to cause various afflictions on others “to drive them mad, to inflame them to love or hatred, to gain their favor, or to constrain them to do or not do some deed.”[18] Illusions involve reanimation of the dead, food and entertainment, or conjuring a mode of transportation. Knowledge is discovered through demons. Demons provide information on various things including identifying a criminal, finding items, or revealing future events." - from the Wikipedia entry on Necromancy.

In the original book "Legion," we follow a Jewish police Lieutenant named Kinderman (an intentional pun on Blatty's part, meaning "kinder man") who investigates a series of murders perpetrated by a killer who seems to be operating from beyond the grave. Throughout the story, Kinderman goes through a series of philosophical queries as to cruelty within the universe and the quandary of why a loving God would allow evil. Ultimately, he comes to the conclusion that all life in our sphere of existence is broken pieces of the fallen angel Lucifer, and that we are gradually making our way toward redemption through this life. In the film version, we get roughly the same story, but the conclusion is left out in favor of an oddly out-of-place exorcism that was inserted by the studio, during which the character of the Gemini Killer's eyes become inflamed and yellow, much like Dahmer's beloved Emperor from "Return Of The Jedi." The character murdered people in ways that were brutal and ironic, favoring decapitation and bizarre bodily experimentation (such as draining a victim completely of blood) seeming to get an almost sexual thrill from his actions. The first victim in the story is a young black boy who is decapitated and left for discovery nailed to a cross, with a blackface-painted head of Christ in place of the boy's head. The Gemini Killer's persona appealed very greatly to the prankster nature within Jeffrey. The Gemini was depicted as being possessed by a demonic entity, driving him to commit acts that shocked the world and caused them to doubt the existence of God. For a variety of reasons, the film spoke to Jeffrey in a very specific way that compelled him further into his inner justifications for his crimes. Although his views toward the world were swaying more toward a godless universe, the strong depiction of supernatural evil and the film's blasphemous content (not to mention the intimations of body mutilation and decapitation, surely sexually triggering for the young man) greatly appealed to his prevailing sensibilities. It was after viewing this film, and becoming obsessed with it, that Jeffrey would quickly ramp up his murderous actions, killing more people in the next year than any other period of time that he admitted to. The character of the Gemini Killer would in fact become so influential on him that he would take to wearing colored yellow "reptile eye" style contact lenses while going out to cruise for prey. It must have been an extremely disturbing sight to see the lanky and sullen individual staring across the room, scanning for prey with inhuman, yellow eyes.

"DAHMER BELIEVED HE WAS SATAN, DEFENSE SAYS: MILWAUKEE — Jeffrey L. Dahmer's bloody pattern of sexually motivated murder, dismemberment and cannibalism led him to feel that he was the devil, his attorney said Thursday. 'He became enamored, overwhelmed, caught up in the character in the (horror movie) 'Exorcist III.' The character... was the personification of evil." - from a January 31, 1992 Los Angeles Times wire service article.

INFINITY LAND

"You're a hard one, but I know you you've got your reasons. These things that are pleasing you can hurt you somehow." - Carpenters, "Desperado"

In June of 1990, Dahmer met a young man named Eddie Smith at his old hangout The Phoenix Club. Eddie was a 27-year-old gay black male who was deeply loved by his sister Theresa, one of the few family members of a Dahmer victim to confront him face to face (after his arrest). Eddie was known for his flamboyant, impressive dancing style and his colorful, turban-like head-adornment that earned him the nickname "The Sheikh." Eddie was murdered and dispatched in the same manner as those before him, but because Dahmer was unable to properly preserve the head and genitals he considered the act a complete failure, going so far as to destroy the photographs of the body (which usually provided much pleasure to Dahmer after the body was gone). The photography of dead bodies became a major part of the ritual for Jeffery, who began to develop a prolific collection of images of the dead and de-limbed bodies of his victims. Something about the murder of Eddie Smith furthered the depression and sadness within Dahmer. It is interesting to note that although Dahmer told Eddie's sister that he murdered black men simply because of his location in a black neighborhood, Eddie was picked up at the same bar as Richard Geurrero many years earlier. Dahmer had not changed his stalking grounds, but simply his choice of victims. With deep sadness, Dahmer told Theresa that he truly desired to be with Eddie and that he was deeply attracted to him. It seems that Dahmer, the confused and lonely soul that he was, had been cursed to hurt the ones he loved.

"A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -- a mere heart of stone." - Charles Darwin

In his next attempt at procuring a companion, Dahmer found himself in a bizarre situation that would prove to be a dark comedy of errors. While attempting to procure his next victim, Dahmer had neglected to restock his sleeping pills that he typically used to sedate his prey. For some reason, Dahmer purchased a rubber mallet to solve this dilemma. They had agreed on a time for the boy (12 o clock, noon) to show up at his apartment, but Dahmer was saddened to find himself stood up. Later that night, by coincidence Dahmer encounter the boy and was told that he thought Dahmer meant 12 midnight, and the boy was actually biding his time waiting to go to Dahmer's apartment. Dahmer asked the boy to lay face down while he was supposedly being photographed, and went for his mallet. He hit the boy in the back of his head several times to no avail, and the confused boy decided that things were getting kind of weird and left, leaving Jeffrey perplexed at the turn of events. Ten minutes later, he was knocking on the door and asking for ten dollars for a cab fare, terrified at the neighborhood that he found himself walking around in. It is important to realize that Jeffrey (with the intention of being invisible to the police) lived in an extremely poverty-stricken black community that was rife with crime. He was living in the "bad" part of town that he was likely to have been taught to avoid as a young person. Dahmer took the boy back inside, and continued to attempt to assault and even strangle him, but relenting. He later told investigators "I just didn't have the ability to do him any harm, I don't know why." He eventually gave the boy his cab fare home, and for his part the boy reported the strange tale of the weird man with the rubber mallet. Due to the unlikely nature of the story, Dahmer was not investigated in the matter. Several weeks later, he re-acquired the needed sleeping pills and successfully killed and dismembered a young man named Raymond Smith. He was able to pleasure himself with the severed head and retain the man's skull for his own later use, and managed to dispose of the body by soaking it in acid for hours, after which it turned into a "slush" that he could simply flush down the toilet, a gallon or so at a time. Dahmer kept Smith's bones around his apartment as decoration. The skull was painted gray so as to lend it an artificial or "commercial" appearance to allay suspicion from visitors. During this time, Jeffery lied to his parole officer about his extracurricular activities, claiming that he spent all of his time at home reading books and sitting on the computer (an unusual hobby in 1990, but one that would excuse his lack of social activities to outsiders, making Dahmer seem like a harmless bookish computer geek). Dahmer also revealed to his parole officer a deep-rooted animosity toward the rich. He seemed to envy the wealth and financial security of the elite of society.

Dahmer describes his ideal partner:
"A well-developed white guy, compliant to my wishes. I would have preferred to have him alive and permanently staying with me."

CANNIBALISM

"It was just another step... just an escalation, something new to satisfy. And I would cook it, and then look at the picture and masturbate." - Jeff on his practice of cannibalism.

Jeff met an athletic, muscular young male named Ernest Miller outside of an adult bookstore that fit into his ultimate idealized fantasy. Miller was the exact body type that Jeffrey obsessed over, and was instantly enamored with the man, wishing to "keep him" as he had done with others. Possibly due to the large size of Miller, instead of attempting to strangle him at the apartment, he slit his throat there, photographing Miller in the process of death and dismemberment. He was so enamored with the physique of Miller that he desired to consume parts of his body in order to make him physically a part of Dahmer. He removed Miller's heart and parts of his calf muscles. It was a continuation of the sexual affinity that Dahmer had with the digestive system, but now Dahmer was putting his victims through his own digestive system, joining with them in his body. He kept Miller's head in the refrigerator for some time so that he could masturbate in front of it and use it to pleasure himself, a long-time preferred activity for Dahmer's sexual satisfaction. He also consistently masturbated into the intestines and other internal organs of most of his victims, a practice that he has difficulty talking about but which was a vital part of his necrophilic fantasy.

"...And solitaire's the only game in town, and every road he takes it takes him down. And by himself it's easy to pretend he'll never love again. And keeping to himself he plays the game... While life goes on around him everywhere, he's playing solitaire." - Carpenters, "Solitaire"

He soon killed again, but this time it was a mistake. He found himself with the dead body of a person that he was completely not attracted to. He dismembered the body of David Thomas, 23 year old black male, and disposed of it entirely. The boy died for no purpose whatsoever, not even providing satisfaction to Dahmer in his death. Dahmer's methodology of dismemberment was streamlined and efficient. He would sit in the bathtub completely nude with the dead body (in order to get no blood on his clothes) and use a hand-saw to dismember it, piece by piece, draining the blood wit tap water down into the plumbing below. At this point it seemed that Jeffery was rapidly killing simply out of rote habit, seeming to find it as the only opportunity for company. Thomas' body was positively identified in Dahmer's photo collection by his family members during the court proceedings. Dahmer would kill three more individuals (Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsay, and Tony Hughs, a deaf-mute gentleman that Dahmer communicated with through notes) during this time, seeming to crave going through the experience again and again, and each time he would keep their skulls behind as a souvenir of the experience. Along with homosexual pornography, Dahmer would usually watch a video tape of "The Exorcist III" with his companions. Whether he was trying to share his mania or simply pump himself up for the kill is unknown, but from the testimony of one individual he would begin to chant at the televisions screen while watching the film in a manner that would frighten his guests. A notorious police report from the escaped Tracy Edwards describes a man who was nice and polite upon first meeting, and then who "completely changed" into another, more sinister person who chanted to himself and seemed enthralled with evil. There were many occasions where he would bring someone home and simply change his mind after talking to them, no longer finding them attractive any more after having them over. None of these visitors seemed to notice the charnel-house atmosphere that Apartment 213 was beginning to emit. The odd smells and bizarre, all-night banging and clanging coming from Dahmer's attracted intense scrutiny from his landlord, Sopa Princewill, who received various bizarre explanations that only made Dahmer seem stranger and stranger to him. At one point Princewill smelled what he was told was "rotten meat" due to a refrigerator gone bad, the middle-aged man lept back at a stench that he felt almost knocked him out. What he was smelling was instead a human torso langishing in a bucket of acid. Dahmer was able to explain his way out of situations solely using his ability to garner sympathy from others and appear that he was just a harmless eccentric, and the reality of what was actually occuring in his apartment was unfathomable. The only ones who knew the truth of what was happening were Dahmer and his goldfish, neither of which were prepared to tell authorities the truth of what was going on there quite yet.

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." - Charles Darwin

JEFFREY DAHMER, DOUBLE FISTING IT

Dahmer stalked the streets like a cat stalking a fish tank. Hitting the club scene with a beer in each hand, one drugged and one regular. Which one will he drink tonight? After thousands of years of human existence as prey for big cats, wolves, and other creatures, it was when man became a hunter, and began to use weapons, that he could defend himself and build civilizations. Jeffrey Dahmer had become for his part a human trapper, a pioneer in a particular art that was unique to his experiences. He had dreams of doing things bigger than just killing people over and over again and keeping their skulls. It is not known if Dahmer continued to listen to heavy metal with the same fervor as he did in his military days, but with his drinking regimen he appeared to be the world's lonliest party animal to outsiders. It is intriguing that in prison Jeffrey cites Charles Darwin's philosophy as an impetus to murder. It seems that Dahmer truly never let go of his Christian ubringing in his mind, but that the philosophy of scientific atheism appealed to his curiousity, compelling him to live out fantasies/experiments that otherwise would have not been conducted. On one hand, he was still loyal to Christianity's concepts of evil and simultaneously justifying his actions to himself with the rhetoric of scientific atheism while not identifying with the idea of pure evil.
Never being resistant to the allures of a young boy, he saw Konerak Sinthasomphone hanging out at the mall and asked the boy if he wanted to come to Dahmer's apartment and hang out. Dahmer took the boy home and drugged him, without realizing that he was the younger brother of Sonsack Sinthasomphone, whom he had gone to jail for molesting just a year and some months before. He had formulated a plan to create a living "zombie slaves." After drugging Konerak, instead of strangling him Dahmer drilled a hole in the boy's head and injected muriatic acid. The boy passed out from shock and after raping him, Jeffrey went out for a beer to calm his nerves. When he arrived back to his house, he was greeted with Konerak sitting on the sidewalk and several neighbors noisily declaring Dahmer's guilt to a duo of police officers who made it onto the scene. Dahmer inexplicably managed to convince the officers that Konerak, who was visibly bleeding from the anus and half-naked (with a hole drilled in his head to boot), was his 19-year old boyfriend, and that the two of them were engaged in a lovers spat. The officers walked the boy back to Dahmer's apartment, where they neglected to engange in an even light search of the apartment (which would have revealed dead bodies, trophy body parts, and a multitude of photographs of missing persons and corpses). The officers also neglected to do a background check on either Dahmer or Sinthasomphone, which would have revealed that Dahmer had actually been to jail for molesting the older brother of Konerak (whom he also drugged before his escape from the apartment) and that he was actually still on probation for the crime. The officers (who were later fired and the subsequently re-hired after much controversy) left Konerak with Jeffrey, who that night delivered a second, fatal injection to the boy and had sex with his corpse. He had decided that Konerak was too much of a liability and that he had to be disposed for the sake of Dahmer's safety. The head was removed for Dahmer's personal enjoyment, defleshed and kept as part of Dahmer's growing collection of skulls (some painted, some natural). Konerak was dispatched efficiently and incorporated into Dahmer's collection without Konerak, Dahmer, or the police realizing that he was the younger brother of the very same boy that Jeffrey was on probation for sexually assaulting not long before.

“Wherever the European had trod, death seemed to pursue the aboriginal.” - Charles Darwin

During the times when Dahmer did not have an actual body to peruse, he would use the pictures and trophies of former companions to satisfy his urges. This would generally lead to dissatisfaction and compel him to go out and live through the experience of being with another person. He went out to Chicago to a Gay Pride parade and met a sympathetic young man named Matt Turner. Turner was a particularly sweet and kind boy who simply thought that he was going to be hanging out with the nice, well-adjusted polite white guy that Dahmer seemed to be. For this instance, he brought the man back to his apartment, but abandoned his recent strategy of attempt to create a "zombie slave." Instead, he strangled the drugged Turner and utilized his severed head for his own pleasures, keeping it in the refrigerator for preservation. Dahmer purchased a fifty-seven gallon barrel of hydrochloric acid to dissolve the bodies of his victims in. Large sections on the body, such as the torso, would be tossed into the barrel in order to dissolve the evidence. This is where Turner's torso ended up. He then met a young man named Jeremiah Weinberger who seemed to genuinely have an affinity for Dahmer. Of all of the men that he killed, Dahmer seemed to feel the most remorse for his first two victims (who were both killed in a fit of anguish, and not intentionally chosen for death) and Mr. Weinberger. Dahmer had fully intended to act out his usual routine on Weinberger, but the two men had such an incredible connection and affinity for one another that (unusual for Jeffrey) they ended up spending a consensual night of passion together in Jeffrey's apartment, with Weinberger apparently never checking the refrigerator and never seeming to suspect the horrors lurking in the house. The two spent an erotic weekend together, after which Dahmer abruptly drilled a hole in Jeremiah's brain and injected boiling water into it. Dahmer had abandoned the muriatic acid method due to the fact that he used it on Sinthasomphone and the boy was still able to retain his will, attempting to get help from the neighbors. This method of "zombie slave" creation seemed to work temporarily, but it was all for nothing as the young man was soon dead on the floor. Dahmer had killed one of the only people to show him genuine affection, someone who would stay with him even after he drilled a hole in their head. He dismembered the corpse naked in the bathtub, in his usual method, taking pictures the whole time. He would sit in the stark emptiness of the bathroom and often commit acts of sodomy with the at-times headless cadavers as he lay in the tub with them, alternating between extreme pleasure, moments of guilt, fierce determination, and finally the cold resolve required to get the job done.

Jeffrey discusses the theory of evolution, and his personal relationship with Jesus Christ, after his arrest and incarceration:
"Thanks to you for sending that creation/science material, because I always believed the lie that evolution is truth, that the theory of evolution is truth, that we all just came from the slime, and when we died, you know, that was it, there was nothing. So, the whole theory cheapens life, and I started reading books that show how evolution is just a complete lie. There’s no basis in science to to uphold it, and I’ve since come to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the true Creator of the heavens and the earth. It didn’t just happen, and I have accepted Him as my personal Lord and Savior, and I believe that I as well as everyone else will be accountable to Him."

FEELING SUICIDAL

"It's hard to tell the nighttime from the day. Your losing all your highs and lows, ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?" - Carpenters, "Desperado"

Amidst Dahmer's prolific excursions into murder, he finally heard from his mother again after many years of silence. She was working as a counseler in another state, and they had a likely tear-filled conversation where Dahmer came out of the closet to her, which she accepted. Despite this openness, the two did not strike up any further conversation, and in fact Dahmer subsequently ramped up his killing operations. It is possible that the boy held a deep-rooted rage to his mother that was somehow connected to the killings, and her coldness seems to be a trait carried on in her eldest son. Of all of Dahmer's family members, she remains an enigma. Dahmer's grandmother Catherine contacted him at work one day out of the blue, asking how he was and expressing love. This temporarily made him happy, but likely reminded him of the guilt that he felt for the extremely antisocial existence that he had been living out. At this point in time, Dahmer had begun to miss significant amounts of time at work, as well as a multitude of meetings with his parole officer. His hobbies, and the disposal and subsequent periods of thought and meditation, began to take up large periods of Dahmer's time. Not only did he begin to miss necessary engagements, his strange behavior and consistently horrible-smelling apartment (which he contantly made up bizarre excuses for) made him a target for eviction by his landlord. Soon Dahmer received terrible news- after almost half a decade of employment, he was being given the pink slip from the Ambrosia Chocolate Company, the job that enabled him to go about his activities. When Dahmer told police of what his ideal sexual partner would be, he described a man that was not unlike himself: a muscular, passive, white male with a gentle aura. Although his victims gradually were chosen from people who appeared different and "other" from him, racially and personality-wise, the deep sadness within him was expressing in a suicidal urge that murdered a part of himself with each incident of passionate crime. Dahmer had gradually been becoming further and further from himself, further away from any ability to love or continue his life with each companion that he sought to incorporate into himself. Despite his attempts at cannibalistic indulgence and constant necrophilic self-satisfaction, Dahmer was far removed from the companionship and connection that he sought, deep down inside. His relationship with his probation officer Donna Chester (the closest person in his life to a friend) became more strained, and his resources were beginning to run dry. They arranged an emergency meeting, where Dahmer revealed that he no longer was working and was facing eviction. His appearance was appalling, he smelled terrible, and admitted to Chester that he was suicidal and hadn't bathed in several days. She could not have imagined the truth of the situation beyond that, which was that Dahmer had spent much of that time laying with the corpse of a man named Oliver Lacy, whose heart he had removed for later consumption. Lacy had come over to the house for a sexual experience with Dahmer, and the two shared a passionate evening giving each other sensual body massages. He was drugged and executed in Dahmer's now-streamlined manner of strangulation, which was now more sophisticated and include the use of a black leather garrote that he purchased for this express purpose. Dahmer was at this point planning the set-up for his altar, which he seemed to believe would give him power and enable him to improve his situation through black magic. Part of the plan was to include the entire skeleton of Oliver Lacy on his altar.

"It just came from within." - Dahmer, on the impetus for his desire to kill.

SHOWERING WITH CORPSES

Jeffery was depressed. He found himself now without the job that had given him the confidence to embark on the life that he was living. He saw no option in the workforce that would enable him to continue on his existence. If he was evicted, it was possible that he would be caught with the massive amount of evidence left behind in the apartment. There were bloodstains on the walls and floor. He became desperate and lonely, laying besides the remains of one of his companions as if they were still alive to show affection to him. The only responsibility that he still attended to was his fish tank, and he would spend long periods of time just observing his aqutic roommates. He showed his tropical fish a love and devotion, a gentleness, that no other living creature saw from Dahmer during this time. They silently and unjudgementally swam about, being there for Dahmer no matter what mood he was in. It is possible that caring for his fish was one of the only aspects of his life keeping him grounded in reality. Walking the streets in his sorrow, Dahmer spotted a young white man named Joseph Bradehoft standing at a bus stop with a six pack of beer. Bradehoft would prove to be Dahmer's last victim. Offering Bradehoft a place to hang out and party, he went willingly to Jeffrey's apartment much the same way as Steven Hicks so many years ago. Dahmer wasted no time dispatching Bradehoft, whose head was also soon separated from his body for the pleasure ritual that Dahmer had grown accustomed to, perhaps even bored with by now. Even if the two would have gotten along, it seems that the intention of picking him up was to kill him and use his corpse for pleasure. He was now a soon-to-be homeless person revelling in the world that he had constructed for himself. In addition to this, locals began to notice the weird man stalking about for prey and wonder if he was connected to the prolific amount of disappearances of black men. One of the reasons why it took so long for him to get discovered was that his victims at this later point were all for the most part undesireables to society. One of the victims' sister called to report that she was receiving strange anonymous phone calls from a man who claimed to have killed her brother. When she brought this to the police's attention they could not even find the initial missing persons report on her sibling. She believes that they disregarded her initial report once they realized that he was gay, believing that for some reason the city police department had a "hands-off" approach to cases involving homosexuality. The treatment given to Konerak Sinthasomphone seems to suggest that this could in fact have been a reality in relation to the case. Dahmer began at this point to randomly proposition people on the street to come back to his apartment, and spent his free time showering and laying about with corpses in an effort for companionship. He sought more and more power, and had at this point completely grown out of touch with his ability to truly love or be in touch with other people. He had become completely cold and within himself, his own spirit finally consumed by the forces that had driven him to acts of bizarrely antisocial violence.

"BODY PARTS, VAT OF ACID FOUND IN APARTMENT: CHICAGO — Milwaukee police arrested a 31-year-old paroled sex offender Tuesday after finding a gruesome collection of mutilated human body parts, severed human heads and a vat of acid in his north side apartment... Said John Batchelor, a neighbor of the arrested man, 'It is really wild. This is worse than 'Friday the 13th.'' Several neighbors said a stench had come from the apartment off and on for months.
'It smelled like something dead in there,' said Eli Vickers, who lives in the building next to the three-story apartment complex where the suspect lived. Police said the suspect, whom neighbors described as a quiet loner, had recently been fired from his job at a candy company and had served a year in jail on sexual assault charges for offering $50 to a teen-age boy to pose nude. Arreola said it had not yet been determined whether the murders were the work of one man or several or where they were carried out." - from a July 29, 1991 Los Angeles Times article by Bob Secter.

Tracy Edwards, a young black male who fit Dahmer's preferred physical type, was hanging out at the Grand Avenue Mall in Milwaukee, the same spot where Dahmer had picked up one of the Sinthasomphone brothers. Edwards and some friends were hanging out and wasting some time when they were approached by a thin, lanky white man with glasses and an unshaven, nervous demeanor. The young men had never seen the guy, and he seemed nice enough, saying that he was a photographer and that he would pay them each one hundred dollars to pose nude. This was a ruse, as Dahmer had practically no money left at this point. Edwards left with Dahmer, who gave Edwards' friends an incorrect address.
Edwards was puzzled by the seemingly intellectual, artistic, but obviously internally tortured man whose apartment he entered. He surely must have noticed the stench of death and decay, which Dahmer attempted to cover with incense. Endearingly, Edwards was struck by the care and attention that Dahmer paid to his tropical fish. Jeffrey was hypnotized and enthralled at his watery companions, observing their movements in the tank like souls trapped in a glass box. Edwards saw before him a deeply dissatisfied and sensitive man. Dahmer offered Edwards a drink while they waited for his companions to arrive, although only Dahmer knew that they would never show up. They continued to talk for some time, with Dahmer discussing his recent unemployed status with great fear and regret. He seemed to be coming slightly unhinged, and Tracy began to wonder when and if his friends would ever show up. Soon, Dahmer snapped, pulling out a large knife from under his bed and hand-cuffed Tracy Edwards. According to Edwards, Dahmer then forced him to watch "Exorcist III," at certain points in time chanting strange gibberish and rocking back and forth while doing so. Edwards began to realize that he was in a situation that was far beyond what he had initially ascertained, and at this point frightened for his life. Dahmer talked about ripping out Edwards heart and eating it, laying his head on the young man's chest in the same manner that he often did to his classmates as a young boy. Edwards was horrified at the sudden transformation and attempted to placate Dahmer by performing flirtatious activity, attempting to get alone time by going to the bathroom. Edwards was shocked to find that the majority of the windows and doors were locked such that one could not escape from inside. Realizing that Dahmer's apartment was rigged to keep people in rather than out, he assessed the situation and knew that he must escape. While Jeffrey was distracted with complaining about his financial woes, Edwards attacked Dahmer, kicking him and managing to flee out the front door while still handcuffed.
Edwards was panicked and could not believe he had managed to escape. As he ran out of the apartment complex, filled with adrenalin from his near fatal experience, Edwards could hear a drunken, sobbing Dahmer yelling in desperation, far behind him, as he ran out of the apartment: "PLEASE... DON'T LEAVE!"

AT LAST

"Light will be thrown onto the origin of man." - Charles Darwin

The police didn't know what to make of the shirtless, intoxicated man in handcuffs that they saw before them. He was telling them about a Satanic white man with locks on his windows, who threatened to cut Edwards' heart out with a knife. Initially they assumed that the man had escaped from another officer, and was making up a story in order to get out of trouble. They attempted to release him from his handcuffs, but once they realized that their keys did not work, they knew for certain that he had not escaped from another officer. They had to believe the rest of his story as well, and when they went in to investigate the situation in Apartment 213 they found a sullen man standing in the darkness, waiting for them with an agreeable, pleasant demeanor. Both officers instantly noticed that the place smelled like rotting organic material. The officers asked Dahmer where the keys were to the handcuffs on Edwards, and he motioned them into the bedroom. In the bedroom, one of the officers found strewn about an enormous wealth of poloroid photographs of nude men, some dead and dismembered. The officer looked around the room and recognized furniture from the bedroom that he was searching in the very same photographs, instantly calling to the other officer to arrest Jeffrey. Jeff screamed at the other officer that he would eat his heart, threatening that he had supernatural powers. It took the combined effort of both officers to pin down Dahmer and arrest him. While waitng for backup, the officers opened the refrigerator to be greeted by the severed head of Oliver Lacy staring back at him. Dahmer's bevy of tropical fish were likely saddened to see their master being dragged away, perhaps wondering who would feed them next. They would soon forget about it all not long after, as scientists have found that fish have almost no lasting ability to remember events. They are non-judgemental and always existing in the moment, much the way that Jeffrey operated in those final days of activity. Soon, he would be thoroughly questioned and prodded at the police station, while officers and Environmental Protection Agents went into Apartment 213 wearing oxygen masks and hazard suits. Camera crews caught these agents bringing out with them the refigerators and vats of acid that stored the bodies of the missing young men to the astonishment of the rest of the world. Soon, the quiet loner from Wisconsin was the nation's biggest news story, capturing the imagination of the world with what was dubbed by hungry press as a "real-life Silence Of The Lambs." In reality, Hannibal Lecter appeared as an unrealistic concept once faced with the reality of Dahmer's life and its effect on those around him. He was the real thing.

Partial list of content found in the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer upon arrest:
- Dahmer's bedroom walls had bloodstains on them, and his matress and pillows were also stained in human blood.
- A metal filing cabinet containing three painted skulls, an entire human skeleton, polaroid photographs of victims in various stages of dismemberment (often posed in erotic position sans head or limbs), a dried scalp and a set of male genetalia.
- a large metal drum filled with acid, containing three human torsos in various stages of decomposition.
- a "King James" bible
- a VHS copies of homosexual-themed pornographic films, a lecture on evolution, "Return Of The Jedi," and "The Exorcist III."
- a hand saw, a claw hammer, a hypodermic needle, several sizes of drills and drill bits, boxes of soilex (used to boil the bones and skulls), muriatic acid, formaldehyde, ether, choloroform, jugs of bleach, and large quantities of odor-suppressing chemicals and incense.
- a kettle containing human hands and several sets of preserved male genitals.
- human skulls on display, painted to appear decorative.
- a freezer (seperate from the main refrigerator) containing human heads, a torso, and internal organs.
- a bloodstained refigerator with a human head, a heart, and portions of muscle shaped into a meat patty.

Dahmer's trial was a public circus, with angry family members yelling at the unemotional and sullen man during the proceedings. For his part, Dahmer was helpful and compliant with investigators, telling them that he himself was relieved that the whole affair was over. Much speculation was made regarding the racial element of his crimes, with the politically correct crowd obscenely painting the shy and reserved man as a "nazi." Growing up in the midwest, raised in a suburban neighborhood when black and white people did not usually mix with one another. He seemed to have a genuine fascination with this "other" element in society that went far beyond victimization. The complex relationship that Dahmer had with some of his African American neighbors was not different from that of many of our founding fathers, who would often have bizarre sadistic/masochistic relations with their enslaved African companions that were kept in nearby houses. Dahmer's desire for a "love slave" was a cultural imperative going back to the earliest emperors and kings, and his fascination/victimization of the descendents of Africans living in America today reflects the very foundations of the United States of America. His case was a vital explosion of racial tension and a desire to reach out to what was to him an alien culture. That his approach was predatory is fitting with the rest of Dahmer's life- at some point in time it seems that he felt that he was no longer able to love, and from that point on love objects for him became synonymous with prey. Compare the reports of Billy Capshaw (Dahmer's former Army bunkmate) with those of Tracy Edwards (Dahmer's final would-be victim). Both men tell a story of a man who trapped them in a threatening situation, only to tearfully break down and tell them all sorts of sad stories about his own life. Jeffery, feeling trapped and victimized, was compelled to ascend to the status of victimizer. Only then, like many men, could he reveal his true sensitivity.

SUFFERING LIKE HIS BELOVED CHRIST

Dahmer was embarassed at his newfound infamy, mortified at the idea of his grandmother Catherine reading about his activitis in the newspaper. He could not imagine any future for himself, and to be put on trial for his crimes seemed a fitting next step. Many have argued that in his depression that he allowed himself to be caught, no longer wanting to live the way he had been living. He recieved mountains of mail from sad and lonely people reaching out to Dahmer who related to his tortured urges. The influx of mail was astounding, and the media attention seemed to grow exponentially as people grew more and more fascinated with each individual aspect of the case. Many people related to Dahmer's desire to become physically closer to others, feeling deep within themselves a dissatisfaction with corporeal reality. In prison, he had a "return to Jesus" that was accompanied by an official baptism in the prison facility's heated pool. At the same time that Jeffery was baptized in prison as a born again Christian, Chicago's "killer clown" John Wacy Gacy (who was, like Dahmer, a homosexual with pedophilic inclinations) was executed in another facility during a total eclipse of the sun (which neither men could experience from inside their prison walls, but an interesting co-incidence nonetheless). Unable to have his beloved beer in prison, he instead chose to get drunk on the cup of the Lord. Dahmer was murdered at the age of 34 while on bathroom duty by a man who believed that he was an incarnation of Christ, beaten to death in the toilet stall. Dahmer was one year older than his beloved Christ was as the time of his own crucifixion, and both lives ended tragically after a great deal of suffering. His story is one of disconnection and inability to meet with others halfway that all can relate to. Dahmer lived in his own infinity land, where he chose to write the rules in a way that gave him no escape. By understanding the reality of the situation, the reality of the supposed "horror" as a simple, mundane cry of emptiness, we see a lack that gives approval to man's cruelty, his dispassion. Jeffrey is gone. A bright light shining across the Universe, questioning the nature of our existence. He is the human enigma that makes life, the hope for something better and the frailty that makes us feel alone. He is the very root of the question "why are we here?," his path a terrible violence, existing always throughout the universe without beginning or end. His tears are the tears of humanity, dragged kicking and screaming out of the womb on a constant slide toward death.

Interview With Jessica Rylan

2012-11-08T16:44:00.000-08:00

{image by Vanessa Totenblom}

INTERVIEW WITH JESSICA RYLAN

MY GOAT: How are things going with you right now?

JESSICA RYLAN: Things have been pretty interesting. I've been in grad school on the West Coast the last two years (for engineering) which isn't something I had ever really envisioned for myself. Culturally, it's pretty different from the noise scene, though getting used to hanging around with a lot of dudes with social problems and questionable hygiene was definitely good preparation!

MG: Are you still operating the IRFP label, still working as Can't? Are those things over?

JR: I don't want to say IRFP is "over" because who knows about the future, but the last tape I did was almost four years ago. As Flower started to ramp up at the end of 2006, my focus shifted there. Originally I wanted IRFP to be a "numbered series of object", not a label. Even though I never numbered (or labeled) any of the Flower stuff, it was kind of a natural extension. Though it seems like now Flower is poised to go on hold also!
Can't as a project has definitely been on hiatus for a while. Sometimes I think it would be fun to have a "reunion" and play old songs, but some of them I can't play in the original form anymore because I sold or gave away the instruments I was using at the time. Also I had a few amps that burned up.

MG: The first time I heard your music was on the RRRecords release "New Secret"... can you tell us a little bit about the background for this record, about the recording, and the impetus for picture disc reissue?

JR: That was my first LP and it was always planned as a picture disc actually. We just made a CDr version of it to sell on tour, since not everyone has a record player. After Ron stopped doing the Pure cd series, he got kind of burned out on music for awhile. But then around 2004 he started getting excited again, especially about the noise scene in New England. He put out the New England box set, which was later followed by California, Michigan, Texas etc. And he also did three picture discs - me, Karlheinz, and Sickness.
All the songs on that record were ones that I played live. I was trying to write "regular" songs within the framework of noise. I was sick of playing the songs on the Final Performance cdr, but the things on my side of New England weren't repeatable. Having set songs made touring a lot more straightforward!

MG: How does your art (paintings, photographs etc) tie in with the sound work for Can't/Jessica Rylan?

JR: I don't want to sound self-centered but I do art primarily for myself. I always felt with music, there was something I wanted to hear that I wasn't hearing anywhere else, so I did it myself. I only tried to paint and draw for a few years and it felt very private and satisfying personally. Then one night I was drunk and threw out 90% of my drawings! It's why I'm a bad artist, because art is really about communicating with other people, and I'm not very good at that!

MG: Do you identify with artists who have darker and more violent themes to their work? Do you think that music and art can provide catharsis that can be healthy at all?

JR: I first learned about noise in the mid-90's, when everyone was reading Apocalypse Culture, and Peter Sotos was first becoming better known. I felt pretty nihilistic at the time so I could appreciate it. The negativity never seemed like an end in itself to me, it was more like making a brave but foolish statement "I'm ok with throwing away everything." That's the aspect of aktionism which is so exciting when you're young.
As I spent more time playing noise it lost the negative edge and became a lot more fun, I just enjoyed the different textures, and how passionate people were in their self-expression. Then it started feeling really tiresome to see people new to noise rehashing the same played-out corpse and bondage photos. But about three years ago it seemed like noise was getting taken over by hippies and goofy improv guys, so everyone started listening to PE instead! Haha, that was a trend I approved of.

MG: Around 2006, I saw you perform as part of Pig Destroyer at the Knitting Factory in New York with Donna Parker... can you give us a little background on this particular collaboration?

JR: It's a pretty simple story - Scott Hull contacted Ron Lessard and asked him to play with them. He said no but suggested Donna and I. I had never heard Pig Destroyer before that first show! It was an amazing sound.

MG: Are you still in touch with Scott or JR of Pig Destroyer? Any chance of a future Can't heavy metal/grindcore collaboration?

JR: I haven't kept in touch with Scott, he seems really busy. The only other time I played with metal musicians was a show in LA in 2007. Shannon Walter from 16 Bitch Pileup and I played with Gabe Serbian of the Locust. It was really fun!

MG: How about Donna? You guys had great chemistry together. Are you guys still in touch? Any more work to come from that project?

JR: She's married now and her second baby is due next month! We talk on skype. I really miss playing with her. We were working on a record for Ecstatic Peace but we didn't finish unfortunately. Hopefully some day!

MG: What is the importance of realism in art versus obfuscation the wearing of masks? Can they exist together?

JR: I guess I understand this question in the context of performance art? Or the aspect of noise performance which is related to performance art? I think people need to take responsibility for their own actions. But also sometimes it's helpful in a wider sense to present ideas or behavior that require anonymity. Part of why Can't needed to end was that my interests shifted and I wasn't the same person any more. The feeling I had in 2003-2004 which made me want to throw myself on the floor all the time was gone. Likewise, the combined emotional vulnerability and emotional exhibitonism I felt in 2005-2007 was gone. On the last Can't tour (Total Confusion Recreation in 2008, with 2deadsluts, Naomi, Suffering Bastard, Earth Crown), I played acoustic guitar in the corner every night with no amp. It was a way to try to face fears, which felt in keeping with the original motivation of Can't. But after those shows I just felt like I was done!

MG: Do you like to do collaborations, or do you prefer to work solo?

JR: As far as music goes, working with other people is difficult but ultimately more rewarding, if it works. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it doesn't seem to work. Probably it's my own fault, because I'm self-centered! That said, if I was going to seriously take up music again, it would have to be as part of a band. I've had too many bad shows, which are especially painful when you're all alone.

MG: Have you found a relationship between things that you have learned in your musical experimentation and things that you have learned in your study of physics?

JR: The most obvious one is that I learned a lot about the qualitative aspects of chaos from playing synthesizer and using a lot of feedback. However, the qualitative part is easy, and doesn't help with the math at all. My prior knowledge of circuits made my undergrad engineering degree easy, but it felt like too personal of a thing to actually study for a career. Now I switched to photonics, which is totally different! Light is still a wave, like sound, but the frequencies are a lot higher, and the scales you care about are a lot smaller.

MG: Do you believe in a spiritual form under animals and plants? Can machines have spirits?

JR: I'm agnostic, though I think about the concept of God a lot. I don't know if spirituality is the right word for animals, though they typically seem like they're living 100% in their environment, and relatively content in doing what they're supposed to be doing. Plants are an extreme example of just going with the flow. They let everything happen and don't take any control. When I was 23 my goal was to have the mindset of a tree, so I wore the same uniform every day and became an alcoholic. Unfortunately, that wasn't effective from a spiritual standpoint! And had a lot of other negative consequences.
As far as machines, I think it's healthy to believe in magic, and I definitely think there can be mysterious serendipities arising from variations and imperfections. However, I the "gadget-magic" which is increasingly popular and available via computers is a really different kind of thing. After I read "The Scientist" by the dolphin researcher John Lilly I was concerned about the Solid State Entity, but that's not a spirit, it's a hostile life form. I guess only time will tell how that plays out.

MG: Can you tell us a little bit about touring with Ron Lessard? Must have been pretty fun... any crazy stories :) ?

JR: The thing with Ron, is that he gets really cranky, and he doesn't like to be away from home. I'm also a townie at heart, so I can relate! Going to England the first time was the worst, not only did everyone drive on the wrong side of the road, but the food was terrible!

MG: Do you feel that you have a warm relationship with your equipment? Do you use any equipment that you haven't physically created or altered yourself, and if not, do you have any interest in that?

JR: When I first started playing, I just used all kinds of random junk. That was a really fun time, especially since I didn't know what I was doing. Then after a while I got these really strong Luddite political feelings so I switched to only using home-made things. Now I'm stuck with synthesizers I built, because I got spoiled and I don't agree with other circuit designers' choices. I definitely had a really close relationship with my Personal Synth, but then we had a falling out in Albany a few years ago. Recently I was playing four Jealous Hearts together, which was really fun, but not quite the same connection.

MG: Have you been able to unite your music work with an academic audience? Is that a goal at all?

JR: There are good and bad things to both worlds. Playing diy noise shows is clearly not an economically sustainable activity. On the other hand, it's a self-selected group of people who are involved in that world, and a lot of them are very passionate about it. But the tours make you want to suicide, when people are like "Oh yeah, you can just crash on my bare concrete floor! By the way, I made you dinner from this rotten garbage I pulled out of a dumpster!"
In the academic world, there's actually a little money, and the accommodations are reasonable. However, there's a lot of politics and bs, and sometimes playing under those conditions can feel totally isolating. The kind of musicians who thrive in that scene seem strangely detached from their own music.

MG: Do you listen to any music coming out these days? What do you think of Ke$ha?

JR: I've been listening to more new bands in the last year than I have since I was 20. I'm so excited about music right now! The last few years has been the golden age of screaming in music, and I think all the keyboard and autotune parts are funny. I love The Devil Wears Prada, Of Mice & Men, Abandon All Ships, Asking Alexandria, Chelsea Grin, Dance Gavin Dance, Alesana, etc. I also enjoy Blood on the Dance Floor and Breathe Carolin as a guilty pleasure. Well, actually ALL of this Radio Disney Screamo is kind of a guilty pleasure. I'm torn about the ethics of it.
Ke$ha is cool, though I actually like Katy Perry better - not that they really have anything in common. It's funny to me that so many people in the noise scene have latched onto Ke$ha as a quasi-role model, but I guess she's more of a real person. Though, that Katy Perry song "Down the Drain" where she talks about her bf passing out while they're making out seems like it must have been true to life.

The Gathering Of Juggalos

2012-11-08T16:38:00.002-08:00

THE GATHERING OF JUGGALOS

"I used to say 'I' and 'me.' But now you're here, it's 'us' and 'we.'" - from the song "Ben" by Michael Jackson.

---Fear Of Clowns---

Clowns share with some pop figures an important role in society. In the United States, the native Lakota tribe had a class of shamans who would perform contrary or foolish actions for the purpose of creating a balance in their culture. When the Europeans arrived, and the subsequent meeting of cultures occurred, the Lakota recognized images of circus clowns as being analogous to their own "contrary" figures. The Southwestern plains tribes had a caste of clowns who performed transgressive acts, called the "Heyoka." Ritualistic mockery of social mores is a part of society that dates back to the Ancient Greeks (as far as Western Civilization is concerned) and pops up in many indigenous societies elsewhere. The clowns represent in society a release of pressure from the buildup of social mores and expectations of society. The simple act of survival becomes a burden in society, bleakness and despair taking over in situations of hardship. Because of this, a safety valve to release this tension becomes a necessary factor in all societies. Clowns have conventionally been able to flaunt all rules and expectations, being able to mock those in power as well as the social standards of the day.
An intriguing development in modern culture is the development of a strata of persons in modern society who have a fear of clowns. The trope of the "evil clown" has become a ubiquitous figure in modern culture, seeping into the seedy world of car decals and carnival airbrushed t-shirts. A cultural signifier of a world gone wrong, the evil clown leers at the sane and level-headed with a cheerless hatred and heartless abandon. Fear of clowns has only been identified as an official "phobia" withing the past few decades, with several recent news stories reporting clown imagery having to be removed from hospitals or other locations because of complaints from individuals. As culture becomes further removed from its survival instinct, the role of the clown in society is understood less, abstracted.
Back to the Heyoka, and the ritual clowns... In shamanistic terms, acting out the lowest urges of mankind comes to serve a purpose. The cathartic nature of the clown's actions, falling off a horse, forgetting how to use bow and arrow, or even having magical luck despite laziness, feeds into the viewers understanding of their need to avoid these actions. People were so close to the day-to-day struggle of finding food and fending off enemies that seeing these things acted out was like a form of magic. Somewhere along the line, as our culture developed, our clowns transformed into a common aspect of our society, often blending into other roles and confusing things. Many who serve the role of the clown in our society are not expressly identified as such, and the typical image of the white-faced, red nosed clown carries a particular social significance of its own, entirely different from its intended meaning.

"Their Garden Of Delights is a terminal sewer... their Immortality Cosmic Consciousness and Love is second-run grade-B shit. Their drugs are poison designed to beam in Orgasm Death and Nova Ovens. Stay out of the Garden Of Delights..." - William S. Burroughs, quoted from "Nova Express."

Commonly, in American culture since the time of circuses, we have separated our clowns into several categories, but an important distinction is made between two characters, the Whiteface and the Auguste. The whiteface clown (similar in appearance to Bozo the Clown) is so named due to being completely covered in face-paint to give him a non-human appearance. He is a "total clown." To accentuate his otherness, a spherical foam nose is placed over his nose in order to add to a surreal, cartoonish appearance. Another trademark of the whiteface is oddly colored hair, and dark facial makeup placed over the initial layer of white greasepaint. His inhuman appearance suggests an otherworldly or even demonic origin, and his control over the Auguste via seemingly magical powers is a large source of the comedy emerging from their interactions. The Auguste is a more poetic figure, wearing perhaps a small amount of makeup that does not completely cover his face. The Auguste is long-suffering, just a fellow trying to get by who is constantly thwarted by the omnipotent and magical Whiteface. The whiteface's appearance is indeed fearful, evoking both the ghostly appearance of a human skull as well as a potentially non-human entity hiding behind a humanoid form. The whiteface mocks and teases, all the while standing superior to the Auguste, who simply cannot get ahead. The deck is stacked to high against him, there is only small victory in the retaining of some semblance of dignity.
The history of Bozo the Clown is the history of much of American business. A much disputed copyright over ownership of the character has become the stuff of bitter legal disputes, ultimately leaving the character's original creator in the dust and a man who assumed Bozo's identity as the one to get rich from all the clowning around. Bozo's move from Chicago television to the outside world via syndication and the national fame that came with it created a homogenized presentation of the whiteface that has since been the standard for our culture's understanding of what a clown is. The 1990 Stephen King television movie "It" (starring Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown) features an evil, child-devouring clown who bears a close similarity to Bozo. In the 1970s and 1980s, dressing up as a clown to amuse children at parties was considered a respectable and not-unusual activity for adults. Famously, serial murderer John Wayne Gacy dressed up as "Pogo The Clown" in his spare time for this very purpose. His self-designed facial makeup is unusual in that the mouth goes up into sharp points, which are usually rounded off for the express purpose of not frightening children. The American rock group KISS, who have managed to have their faces grafted to everything from pinball machines to lunch boxes, strongly resemble a cross between traditional Japanese Kabuki make-up and the appearance of a skeletal, frightening whiteface clown. Rock stars often play the ultimate clowns- flaunting unconventional values while being held aloft by the very status quo that they mock. In many ways they are the whiteface, having magic and perfection, while the audience is the Auguste, the poor fellow who can't get what he wants under the thrall of those who seem to have it all.

"The increase in autistic children is believed by the authors (of this book) to be the result of increased trauma-based mind control..." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

In the past few years, the Detroit hip-hop duo known as the Insane Clown Posse have become ubiquitous due to the ridiculous and comical nature of their loyal and highly visible fan base. The premise is simple: two men wearing stylized clown face paint (resembling KISS more so than, say, Bozo) act out strange fantasies about being part of a "Dark Carnival" that stands in judgment of all humanity. To this end, the duo tell stories about committing acts of extreme violence and depraved sexuality during the course of their albums, which often exceed one hour in length. The group has consistently managed to attract controversy over the course of its existence, and over the past decade has cultivated the devoted cult audience into a veritable nationwide phenomena. Their fans, called "Juggalos," are known for wearing face paint in public and can be identified by a tiny image of a dreadlocked man wielding a hatchet (usually seen as a sticker on their vehicle or even as a tattoo).
It looks like this:

"Monarch slaves are threatened with fire, like the Scarecrow. They also see people dismembered like the Scarecrow was dismembered. For them it is not an idle threat. The front alters also have hearts full of pain like Scarecrow. Certain alters are not given courage and most have their hearts taken from them. The alters who are programmed not to have hearts are hypnotically told the same thing the Tin Man says, "I could be human if I only had a heart." ...Some alters are taught they are stupid and have no brain." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

Since the dawn of this recent millennium, these Juggalos have gathered together once a year from all over the country to a large concert curated by the Insane Clown Posse (or ICP for short) called, fittingly enough, the "Gathering Of The Juggalos." Known for an association with the immortally uncool Vanilla Ice, and a humorously over-the-top cheesy promotional video, this event has been the subject of a great deal of mockery and derision since its original inception. It is a fitting reaction to hearing of a large group of people willingly imitating clowns and spraying cheap soda on each other, but these Juggalos are indeed serious about their allegiance to the other members of the group, as well as the values of the "Dark Carnival." They spray Faygo soda upon each other's bodies and commit acts of depravity both in their daily life and at the Juggalo festivals. Many of these young people have tattoos proclaiming their allegiance to the Insane Clown Posse, a sign of loyalty that shows a lifestyle decision going far beyond "favorite band" status for the wearer of the mark of the Juggalo.

"I love you white trash m*therf*ckers." - New Orleans hip-hop artist Master P speaking live to the audience of the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos at Cave-In-Rock, Illinois

The Insane Clown Posse's two members have been accused by British researcher Jon Ronson of being closeted Evangelical Christians. The message of their Dark Carnival is that of representing a vengeful and angry force in judgment of humanity, represented by a higher power. Unlike many evangelicals, the duo speaks in a colloquial dialect filled with expletives, and brags gleefully about necrophilia. In many ways, on a larger scale the social phenomena that is represented by the Gathering Of Juggalos is a modern manifestation of the ancient Roman Saturnalia, in which citizens of the lowest classes were encouraged to behave in a debauched manner like common behavior of the economic superiors. The social betters who defined the roles of ancient Western society in ancient times would momentarily allow the lower classes to have their time of partying and revelry in order to keep the masses in check. In this way, the audience becomes the clowns, for the amusement of those who would choose to stick around for the spectacle. Many in Roman society at the top were openly disdainful of the event, eagerly anticipating its end every year.

JOEY AND THE "AUGUSTE"

The FBI definition of Juggalos as a dangerous gang seems misguided, as the Juggalo nation certainly resembles more a faith cult than a violent gang. In this world of cynicism and modernity, their allegiance to mania and male-domination is simultaneously rare in its unwaveringness and inert in execution... a passion and fury amounting to disconnect from the progressive elements that further a society. An odd faith in the justice and punishment that will be delivered by a God who resembles a game show host more than a classical depiction of a deity defines their connection to an authority beyond those of Earth. The Dark Carnival is a postmodern nightmare blending religious rhetoric, commercial elements of underground music culture, and violent rhetoric for the creation of a self-deprecating nihilism that will be known as the death-knell of a particular strain of American Caucasoid popular culture. The message of these clowns pacifies and control a certain segment of the population, planting a seed of morality in miscreants who would otherwise be completely directionless. In this way, the Insane Clown Posse represents a powerful and necessary agent of social control, a codifying element that collects the detritus of white culture's discarded and confused dissenters.

All writing by Joseph Gates: harshhumanignorance@gmail.com

Going Over The Rainbow

2012-11-06T05:26:00.002-08:00

GOING OVER THE RAINBOW

"Singer Brandy has one of the last messages ever delivered by Whitney Houston — but she’s not telling anyone what it says. On Feb. 9 in Los Angeles, Houston approached the younger singer as she and fellow singer Monica and mentor Clive Davis were conducting an interview with E! A post on RyanSeacrest.com says Houston “crashed” the interview, then goes on to say “Whitney seemed a bit manic as she told Monica about swimming ‘two hours a day,’ and conspicuously handed a note to Brandy before hugging Davis.” When E! later asked Brandy directly what the note said, she replied “I’m going to just not say what it was and just keep it to myself for my own personal reasons.” She also told the network “Whitney meant everything to me... She’s the reason that I sing.”- Source: MSNBC

After the demise of pop queen Whitney Houston, a large number of commentators unsurprisingly expounded upon her death for their own purposes. Conservative fist-pumpers used her early death as an opportunity to prostheletize about the decline of morality. Some within the music industry have taken the opportunity to show their anger and rage at the music establishment, pointing fingers at the shadowy handlers who pushed Whitney to excess, denying her the help that she really needed. Further out into the field of theoretical analysis is the ever-growing contingent of internet commentators who see a mystical synchronicity in the actions of celebrities that is directed by a shadowy cabal of master mind-manipulators. To wit, a flood of low-quality Youtube video-makers and armchair journalists have devoted their time and effort for this purpose, creating surreal and perplexing short videos highlighting the supposed "Illuminati symbolism" to be found in all sorts of mainstream entertainment. Although the myths and symbolism of antiquity are indeed important to the elite of the world, internet commentators and bloggers bend over backwards to hysterically decry the work of artists such as Lady Gaga, Pink, Jay-Z, Rihanna, and many others, due to the recent explosion in popularity of the use of esoteric and occult symbolism in popular music videos. Popular tropes in this vein include such imagery as the eye in the pyramid, the unfinished pyramid, two pillars, and checkerboard floors, all of which are Hermetic icons and not necessarily indicitive of the worship of "evil." This distrust of the pop industry seems to come from the prepondence of unnatural deaths related to pop figures in recent years (Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Whitney Houston, Brittany Murphy, etc), in conjunction with the increasing vapidity of pop product. Websites focused on these issues make endless speculation on the nature of pop icon imagery as it relates to a rich tapestry of symbolism, focusing on Masonic/Esoteric imagery and, most intriguingly, a complex and seemingly unrelated series of memes that all can be grouped under the banner of the alleged "Monarch Mind Control Program."

"Children in day care centers are reporting small boxes with wires that electroshock them during programming." - Fritz Springmeier

The stories and claims relating to this particular strain of writing are intriguing: on military bases and underground bunkers are sci-fi-like laboratories where mind-controlled sex slaves are cultivated through a complex series of hypnotic procedures. The victims of this mind control are alleged to be exposed to both physical violence and forced sexual encounters, in descriptions that often mirror those of Satanic Ritual Abuse allegations. The reasoning for this is that the trauma from these sessions creates a split in the personality of the victim, resulting in a malleable mental state that can be programmed using various psychological triggers. Theoretically, because of the mind-expanding capabilities of the mind control procedures, this process is used to create puppet individuals, who can be presented before the public as entertainment and spectacle. This spectacle is used to dazzle and suspend disbelief while particular subliminal triggers and cues are pushed down the gullets of the audience, all for the purposes of social control. Essentially, a form of hypnosis and control can theoretically be exerted upon the audience at large through the use of controlled individuals. The control of individuals is alleged to extend to body and mind alteration through invasive surgery. Imagery that is considered a "sign" of Monarch control by researchers can be infinite in nature, but popular tropes include (but are not limited to by any means): cat/kitty imagery (indicative of what Springmeier calls a "sex kitten" alter personality), the Monarch butterfly (when the bottom half of the brain is seen from above, with the top removed, apparently it makes a pattern that closely resembles the shape of a butterfly... hence the Monarch being symbolic of control of the hall-of-mirrors nature of the human mind construct), reptilian eyes (very popular in the Youtube videos of this nature are "eye transformation videos"), trapped in a cage symbolism (self-explanatory), and puppet/robot symbolism.

“I think we all, as artists, because we’re highly sensitive people, and this machine around us, this so-called ‘music industry,’ is such a demonic thing. It’s sacrifices people’s lives and their essences at the drop of a dime... I had a manager once say to me, ‘You know you’re worth more money dead than alive.’" - singer Chaka Kahn on the death of Whitney Houston.

Popular analysis of this Monarch concept is largely influenced by the work of a researcher going by the alias of Fritz Springmeier. Springmeier, whose name seems to be a clever pseudonym with mystical connotations, has written a series of widely distributed documents that claim to demonstrate a large-scale mind control project enacted on some United States citizens called the "Monarch Program," a phenomenon about which there is not much outside information (beyond Springmeier's voluminous efforts and some other assorted "first-hand" accounts). According to Springmeier, program consists of the kidnapping and brainwashing of certain individuals, who are then used to enact a large-scale hypnosis of the population. This hypnosis, and the techniques used to achieve it, is performed according to specifications that relate to the realm of ritual magic. The end result of this process is a sort of alchemical transformation of reality, through the re-emergence of ancient and long-forgotten powers that date back to the earliest forms of human civilization. Whether making direct reference by name to Springmeier, or simply repeating his ideas practically verbatim as if they are fact, a multitude of commentators across the internet have been quite busy popularizing and expounding upon Springmeier's nightmarish view of the entertainment and media world. For many, it makes sense to see the large-scale influence of the media as a monopoly run for the purpose of ritualistic programming.

"They have found that ELF and VLF electro-magnetic waves can be used to control people’s thoughts. Harmonic generators (code named "ether-wave") are able to imbed detailed commands which are linked to audible triggers. This is one of the standard features of the Monarch program. It allows the slaves to be controlled by trigger words which make no sense or seem to carry no negative connotation to outside listeners. For instance the words, "Mr. Postman wait and see" (a Marionette command) might set off an access sequence so that a slave living away from its master goes to its master (also called a handler)." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

This author first encountered Mr. Springmeier's work in the early 2000s, on a website where his book "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave" was printed in its entirety. This was not uncommon, as Springmeier's work is often quoted verbatim as fact on anonymous sites on the internet, sometimes without even acknowleging the source of the information. In this document is a disorienting and overall confusing array of information depicted a complex conspiracy involving intergenerational bloodlines, the Disney corporation, the CIA/US Military, the world banking organizations, and apparently Satan to enslave humanity using ancient mind control technology that has been perfected with modern technological capabilities. Similar in scope to the story of Cathy O'Brien, but with a stronger basis in science and more easily provable claims, Springmeier's work shows an intense knowledge of the mind and of the teachings of the Mystery Religions that he claims to stand against. According to Springmeier, from a very young age, candidates are chosen and controlled with media, electroshock, drugs, disorienting and conflicting viewpoints, and more sinister methods, all for the purpose of being puppets to be used by various handlers for a larger alchemical purpose. Their minds are disassociated such that within them is trapped a controlled set of dreams and desires, to be squashed or illuminated at the will and command of their controllers.
One of the highlights of "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave" is a detailed, minute-by-minute analysis of how the Disney film "Fantasia" is used by covert government mind programmers to instill visualizations in children during the process of brainwashing. Often this will take on a spiritual or metaphysical dimension, and Springmeier seems to suggest that various "demons" develop within the consciouness of the recipients of this particular form of mind control. This demonological view of the entertainment industry spreads to all levels, with a multitude of controlled "slaves" utilized by the media to trigger reactions in particular members of the audience. For those who are not the target of specific commands in media, it seems that a larger social agenda is still pushed in the material that provides a more subtle, subliminal set of commands to the average recipient of programming. Society is molded by popular opinion, which is dictated by programmed individuals who are presented to us in the media in order to facilitate the direction of culture. The significance and structure of the control is based around the concept of outside influence, a spiritual and invisible influence working through suggestion and ritual through generations of human beings. Like in "Twin Peaks," the entities act through human beings in order to feed off their energy from another realm. The control structure is protected by the "need to know" nature of the organizational hierarchy of power. On a metaphysical level, Springmeier's work has an eerie ring of truth. The faceless nature of the expectations of mass market consumerism cause the product that is shoved down our throats to become more homogenized and less oriented to the inclination of the individual. We sell our souls in order to entertain our children, allowing them to be educated into a lifestyle of expectations that will never be met. The ideal consumer gives up his emotions freely, played like a piano by marketing minds who line their pockets on the hopes and dreams of others. The cynicism belies an inhuman lack of compassion.

"The Jokers - The everyday demons who the alters have to contend with if they step out of line, are the Jokers. Jokers can jump out of the mirrors and drag an alter into the looking glass world. Alters going into the system away from their assigned living quarters end up in mazes of mirrors. The mazes of mirrors can’t be broken because demons are placed behind the mirrors. However, deliverance methods work well to destroy the power of these demonic protected mirrors. Many, if not most of the occult world do not view spirits as evil. Illuminati children are taught that these spirits are playmates. Since the child is not allowed real friends, they are happy to have demons to play with inside their mind." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

Upon first glance, Springmeier's "Illuminati Formula..." seemed very similar to me in some ways to the famously sensationalistic work of David Icke. A troubling point in Springmeier's work is his insistence on the use of the term "Illuminati," as well as his insistence on the domination of Earth by "Satanists" (despite a continued insistence that their practices pre-dating Christianity). The Illumnati brand name seems to use Adam Weishaupt's historical anti-royalist, pro-liberty organization the Illuminati as a catch-all name for a vast conspiracy of the elite. It seems to be a stand-in word referencing the highest levels of the elite in the world of finance, military, and entertainment (worlds where family dynasties often do exist, and the players often intertwine). It is generally presented in an alarmist and discomforting manner that pushes what could be called an "end-times" agenda. It appeals to an inherent emotional feeling that there is inherently something "wrong" with our society, a perceived but undefinable impurity. Like Icke, Springmeier's research is often rife with "first-hand accounts" from unnamed sources, offhandedly declaring the truth of controversial assertions, such as the employment of Auschwitz scientist and SS Officer Dr. Josef Mengele by the US Government. In Springmeier's version of history, Mengele survived his death in 1979 to work for the United States as the mysterious "Dr. Green," a well-travelled pioneer of mind-control technology. The immense powers attributed to this cabal are attributed to service to an entity that Springmeier calls "Satan" or "Lucifer.

World events that are seemingly unrelated yet similarly thrown into the public eye, such as the OJ Simpson murder trial or the JonBenet Ramsey disappearance, are attributed to the orchestrations of this cabal for the purpose of social control. There is evidence that an attourney involved in the OJ Simpson case (Kardashian) may have been involved in the purchase of an assassin in an incident relating to the case, possibly involving Nicole Simpson. Interesting. Dark Shadows fans should take not that the alleged Grande Dame of Illuminati Vampirism is named Collins in Springmeier's pantheon. She has a crescent-moon shaped throne that she can rotate with a foot pedal. Now that is very interesting. Self-aware of the nature of disinformation, Springmeier goes so far as to categorize the various types of disinformation agents that one might encounter in their search for the truth:

"AGENT OF INFLUENCE--These agents can be unwitting, under mind-control, or ideologically motivated to use their positions of influence to sway the minds of others. Examples of Agents of Influence are anchor men on T.V., journalists, labor leaders, TV commentators, academics quoted by the media, & some politicians.
CONFUSION AGENT--An agent whose job is to produce confusion by disseminating confounding information.
CONTRACT AGENT--These are the rogue agents, such as the mob, who the CIA get to do particular jobs on contract. Their connections can be denied.
DEEP COVER AGENT--A sleeper agent (often a programmed multiple or person with mind-control programming) who has been a long term sleeper agent.
DISINFORMATION AGENT--This is a highly placed agent who passes disinformation to other governments.
NOTIONAL AGENT--A fictitious non-existent "agent" which is created with a real-looking identity to mislead.
PROVOCATION AGENT--An agent sent in to provoke & destabilize the target group to do foolish things.
SPOON-FEEDER AGENT--Someone who dribbles out legitimate information, this is often done to build up a person's credentials (bona fides)."

It is difficult to ascertain exactly which category Fritz himself would fall into, if any. A strange and recent development in the case of Fritz Sringmeier is that he was arrested and convicted in the early 2000s of armed bank robbery, and was released in March of 2011 by a judge who looked at the case and ascertained that there was no evidence against the man. Was Mr. Springmeier himself the victim of a conspiratorial disinformation campaign? It was during his incarceration that his literature was most widely disseminated, having the distinct allure of a persecuted and in fact jailed man.*

"The Monarch victims of today are the tail end of centuries of efforts by the Kaballists, Freemasons, and the Illuminati adepts to completely control other human beings. The following quote comes from a communist manual on how to brainwash a nation. It could just have well been written by Monarch Mind-Control Programmers. "The first thing to be degraded in any nation is the state of Man, himself. Nations which have high ethical tone are difficult to conquer. Their loyalties are hard to shake, their allegiance to their leaders is fanatical, and what they usually call their spiritual integrity cannot be violated by duress. It is not efficient to attack a nation in such a frame of mind. It is the basic purpose of [mind-control] to reduce that state of mind to a point where it can be ordered and enslaved. Thus, the first target is Man, himself. He must be degraded from a spiritual being to an animalistic reaction pattern. He must think of himself as an animal, capable only of animalistic reactions. He must no longer think of himself, or of his fellows, as capable of ‘spiritual endurance,’ or nobility... " As it seems in foreign nations that the church is the most ennobling influence, each and every branch and activity of each and every church, must, one way, or another, be discredited. Religion must become unfashionable by demonstrating broadly, through pyschopolitical indoctrination, that the soul is non-existent, and that Man is an animal." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

Not all of Springmeier's information is correct. For example, he states that the pop artist Madonna is a mind-controlled servant of these same evil masters who have employed Dr. Mengele for the doctor's twilight research. The evidence for this claim is based on the existence of what he states is "a real life film (that) was made of her being raped... and then her cult family taking the rapist and sacrificing him" sold for 19 dollars US by a company called Vidimax. The reality of this situation is that Madonna (under the name Louise Ciccone) appeared in a very low budget "art film" of no discernable quality titled "A Certain Sacrifice." The film is similar to those of John Waters or Andy Warhol, depicting bohemian excess and other general silliness, including a mock "Satanic sacrifice" at the end of the film. Vidimax indeed traded in films that alleged to be "snuff" (including the Michael Findlay filmed-in-South-America shlockfest "Snuff," a movie so silly that not even Springmeier could mistake for the real thing), although all of their products were of course fictional depictions of cannibalism and other sort of sensationalistic subject matter. Vidimax was simply another fly-by-night VHS company that popped up in the 80s to make a quick buck- the filmmakers involved with "A Certain Sacrifice" used Madonna's fame to make some money off of their low-quality product, and the intentional insinuation on the part of Vidimax seems designed to provoke and fascinate moralists such as Springmeier. Instead of analyzing the film for what it truly is, Springmeier simply states that it is a true-to-life snuff film, thus unfortunately and rather definitively discrediting himself. He makes many of these glaring errors with rather stunning regularity, especially in regard to the field of entertainment and media. The juxtaposition of factual scientific information next to glaring sensationalism and often innacurate, unresearched reporting makes Springmeier's work startlingly inconsistent to the average reader.

PSY-OPS

"I married Fritz, because I was in love and I felt he was a devoted Christian and a victim of his first wife. The fact remains, however, that Fritz is a convicted felon, and he spent time in prison... He was on the run with his son by his first marriage, James, for almost four years. During this time he used false identification under 6 or 7 names... Fritz is trained as a grapho-analyst, and is a talented graphic artist. He has made his own driver's licenses before and a trusted friend says he has created more false ID. He saw Fritz with a current Canadian passport and credit cards under the name of "Amos Eicher," one of the aliases he used on the run... I don't even know who this man is anymore." - from a letter by Gail Springmeier, estranged wife of Fritz.

The man known now as Fritz Springmeier was born in Garden City, Kansas on September 24, 1955. The name on his birth certificate reads Victor Earle Schoof, which he had legally changed in 1987 to "Fritz Artz Springmeier." He was the child of a man who worked as an agricultural engineer for the United Nations, and the young Victor Schoof got to travel to exotic locales like Nepal and Hawaii from a very young age. He claims in his book "Be Wise As Serpents" to have been a graduate of West Point Academy, although there are no records of a Fritz Springmeier or Victor Schoof ever having attended the elite military institution. At some point during his young adulthood, he and his first wife got involved in the Jehovah's Witness organization, which eventually led to the end of his marriage and his abandoning the Jehovah's Witness faith, which he viewed as a product of mind control efforts to create a racist doomsday cult. It was at this point that Fritz abducted his son went into hiding for several years before being captured by the FBI and placed in federal prison. After spending some time behind bars in the federal clink, Fritz re-emerged in the Oregon area, working with a cult rescue and deprogramming organization focusing on combating the Jehovah's Witness religion. It was during this time that he began to work on what would be his most important calling, attempting to compile a blueprint of the control system that he felt was oppressing his fellow Americans. His experience with the Jehovah's Witness organization seemed to mark a major turning point for the career path of Fritz, and it was at this point that he began to cultivate himself into the hard-line anti-"Illuminati" defender of the Christian faith that he still presents himself as to the world today. During this time he married again, jokingly telling his wife Gail that he had married her because of her elite bloodline. After the birth of their son, Springmeier decided to work full time on his "ministry," a Christian oriented series of pamphlets, books, and speaking appearances that were designed to warn others about the evils of the emerging new era of Anti-Christian debauchery.

Fritz's first book, "Be Wise As Serpents," is a relatively straightforward expose regarding several supposedly Christian organizations and their ties to hypocritical financial dealings, mind control experiments, social engineering, New Age ideals, and secret societies. He discusses the Jehovah's Witness church, the Mormons, televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart etc, and many other large moneymaking Christian organizations, illustrating many valid links within those entities to corruption and hypocrisy. It seems almost like an answer to the work of William Cooper, who shared a similar expose of corruption in his book "Behold A Pale Horse" that implicated the Catholic Church in a worldwide conspiracy involving secret societies seeking to create a new world order. Pretty standard stuff for this sort of field, but Springmeier's extensive research and ideosyncratic style stuck out even on his earliest work. The fact that his earliest work seems to exist to undermine and question the popular forms of organized Christianity, he appears in the early days to be very much the wolf in sheeps clothing, planting doubts in the mind of true believers in the name of protecting them from the impending "Antichrist." He followed his early work up with "Bloodlines Of The Illuminati," which proports to be an encyclopedic compendium of the "13 Illuminati bloodlines" that rule the world.
It is filled with inflammatory and impossible history that works along a particular and intriguing logic. The O.J. Simpson case was an orchestrated affair to flare racial tensions in America. Each of the 13 Illuminati families is presided by a "Mother Of Darkness" who drinks the blood of children on certain occult holidays. Almost everything is a front for "Satanism." "Fantasia" was created by Disney as a mind-control effort, thus the reasoning behind releasing it almost twice every decade through the 90s into theatres. Perhaps one of the most epic sections of Springmeier's work is his detailed analysis (nearly frame-by-frame) of mind control triggers located throughout the animated Disney film "Fantasia."

"It's not only multiples who are programmed - the world is programmed. We are programmed to believe our presidents are men of honour, men of great integrity. Our presidents are rotten bastards - they are pedophiles, they are drug addicts, they practise high magic, they practise ritual. They think nothing of live sacrifice of small children. They think nothing of having their own slaves available to them. That's the way it is, that's the truth." - Cisco Wheeler, in a radio interview with Wayne Morris from 1998

There is a great deal of truth in Springmeier's depiction of the psychiatric industry as a nightmarish, Nazi-like mind control machine, however, and much of his history regarding these matters is actually quite sound. Springmeier's historical research in the "Bloodlines Of The Illuminati" book is actually quite sound and informative, surprisingly so, in fact. When compared to the large-scale generalizations declared in the works of David Icke or Texe Marrs, the factual historical evidence compiled by Springmeier is impressive to say the least, putting him closer in touch with more knowledgable researchers like Alex Constantine (who work is based on actual evidence and not mere connect-the-dots "isn't it obvious people?" kind of lurid speculation). During the time that he is promoting these books, Springmeier also was giving many live speaking engagements regarding what he referred to as his ministry. To this end, Springmeier would appear in various church-organized public appearances for the purpose of promoting his work. Through developing a persona of a righteous man fighting against a perceived Luciferian influence in the world at large, Springmeier has exposed many Bible-Thumping traditionalists to the concepts of Ancient Mysticism, Demonology, the Quabalistic Tree Of Life, violent and disturbed sexuality, extreme violence, Satanic imagery, and some of the most cutting-edge psychological mind-wizardry that has been recently developed. Like the work of Dr. Wilson Bryan Key (who saw sexual subliminals in all forms of art, sometimes literally drawn in by Key himself), Springmeier scintillates and disturbs the reader, sometimes going too far with speculation of which there is no logical truth. In this way, Springmeier speaks in a twilight language of disinformation that often attains both poetic heights and sensationalistic depths. Somewhere, buried among the intentionally murky and disturbed sci-fi realms of awareness, is much more than a simple kernel of truth: it is an alternate history of the modern era and America's influence on the rest of the world. It is the story of how ideas and images can be used as magical tools in a battlefield wrought with confused signals, double agents, traps, and dissassociation.

"One 1955 MKULTRA document gives an indication of the size and range of the effort; this document refers to the study of an assortment of mind-altering substances described as follows:
1. Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.
2. Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.
3. Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
4. Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
5. Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.
6. Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.
7. Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called "brain-washing".
8. Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
9. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.
10. Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.
11. Substances which will produce "pure" euphoria with no subsequent let-down.
12. Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.
13. A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.
14. Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts.
15. Substances which promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.
16. A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.
17. A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a person to perform physical activity.
A secretive arrangement granted the MKULTRA program a percentage of the CIA budget. The MKULTRA director was granted six percent of the CIA operating budget in 1953, without oversight or accounting.[24] An estimated $10 million USD or more was spent." - from the Wikipedia page on Project MKULTRA.

Springmeier is deadly accurate about the intentions of some of the top names in the recent history of the American Psychiatric Industry. Although there is no documentation to corroborate the existence of Project Monarch, there are deep roots for the ideology and practice that it describes in the history of the US Goverment's post-World War Two research into mind control. The United States Government, and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency became very focused during this time on research into what can only be called mind control. The intentions given openly for the project include the creation of super-soldiers, study for social control, and (most predominantly) the development of "interrogation techniques." Most famously, several different umbrella projects were developed with "Project MK-" as a pre-fix... the most famous sufix ULTRA is simply a military term that dates back to World War II that indicates the most secret of secret projects. MKULTRA existed alongside a multitude of others, MKNAOMI, MKOFTEN, MKDELTA etc, many of which are permanently classified due to the destruction of the majority of the related files in the late 1970s. One of the most unsettling aspects of the MK projects is that the disturbing aspects of it that are known are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the larger implications of the projects.
Under the orders of top level members of the CIA, extreme secrecy surrounded a series of projects, including an early one for which the drug LSD (Lysergic Acid Diamethylene) was developed. There were many hopes for the uses of the now-illegal psychedelic, ranging from an "ultimate truth serum" to something that could simply be used to scramble someone's brain. An intriguing aspect of the LSD experience is that one is apt to find profound meaning in mundane commands delivered at the hieght of a "trip." This technique was used in Government studies by American scientists such as Dr. Ewen Cameron and Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Interestingly, CIA director Alan Dulles (who was instrumental in the development of many of these projects) seems to have been aiding in the existence of similar experiments during World War II in his extensive and well-documented efforts to financially support and sustain the National Socialist Party of Germany. Facts such as this give particular creedence to the bizarre claims by Springmeier and some other supposed "former mind-control victims" that Auschwitz doctor Joseph Mengele had been protected by the United States Government and utilized in top secret experiments, possibly as part of the well-known Project PAPERCLIP (where many former rocket scientists who worked for Adolf Hitler during the war were given immunity and hired by the United States Government. It would not be the first time, either, as Shiro Ishii, mastermind of the atrocities at the Japanese biological weapons testing facility Unit 731, was granted immunity by the feds in exchange for some of his knowledge of deadly gases. There is even strong evidence stating that Ishii actually moved back to the United States to continue his research at a Maryland biological warfare research laboratory. Such stories provide the seed for evidence, but Springmeier's claims are far more extraordinary.

"The Monarch Mind Control was carried out in large airplane hangers on the base which have been able to house thousands of tiny cages just large enough for human babies. Lots of 1,000 babies was a small batch. According to people who worked in the hangers helping program, many batches were 2,000 or 3,000 babies. Many survivors remember the thousands of cages housing little children from ceiling to floor. The cages were hot wired (electrified on the ceiling, bottom and sides) so that the children who are locked inside can receive horrific electric shocks to their bodies to groom their minds to split into multiple personalities. These cages are called Woodpecker Grids." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

Although Springmeier's first couple of books resemble more traditional conspiracy lore, it is the "Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave" series that really raises eyebrows. His first couple of books seem to come completely out of left field, just representing ones man's personal research into the world of symbolism, wealth and power. Springmeier would travel the country giving talks to church groups, warning them of the impending apocalypse and destruction of society at the hands of the Antichrist. Somewhere, at some point, he meets a woman with a rather incredible story named Cisco Wheeler. Cisco Wheeler says that she is a former Monarch slave who has access to memories, and Springmeier being a "de-programmer" and her strike up a business relationship.
Here is a blurry picture of "Cisco":

He unearths her "memories," they write it all down, and go around the country and tell the people about it all. Obviously this put a strain on both of their marriages, but the results of this collaboration speak for themselves... several epic-sized volumes of some of the most out-there material that you are ever likely to encounter in the field of mind control research.
The scope of what is being described in the literature makes much of the world sci-fi pale in comparison. High-tech wizards keep society in control through an elaborate series of recorded concepts and tropes, used to create a worldview that cannot be escaped. Hundreds of thousands of people are kept for bizarre experments far below the earth. Demonic entities engage in mental possession excercises with large groups of children through televised cartoons and entertainment. It is not dissimilar from the world we live in, but familiar things are placed in the proverbial fun house mirror and expectations are turned upside down. Virtually every organized group in existence has their fingers in the Illuminati pie in Springmeier's world... he just lives with the knowledge, preparing for Judgement Day.
An elaborate aspect of Springmeier's work is the NLP-like use of "Monarch" language derived from certain entertainment programs that are allegedly used in mind control. For example, going "over the rainbow" (a reference to "The Wizard Of Oz," apparently a major force in the Monarch mileau) seems to have a resonance with piercing a veil into another dimension, allowing some sort of forces to join with you or perhaps enter you. This demonological aspect of Springmeier's story is unusual, and belies a knowledge of ritual magic and Enochian magic.

"The broadcast of the 1995 Miss Universe Contest did a very unusual freeze-framing of the show while it was on. The screen was mysteriously freeze-framed 9 times, this was a trigger for Illuminati Mothers of Darkness alters. A Mother of Darkness type throne was sat upon by the winner of the contest. An all-seeing-eye was flashed up on the screen with the code A MAY ZING written on it. This is the type of puns that the programmers enjoy. The winners of the contest came from INDIA, CANADA, and the USA. The order and names of those countries have to do with end times programming. The names were a code to certain Mothers of Darkness systems. India wore a Mother of Darkness type garment. Canada wore black and white, and USA wore Red. Miss India gave another code during the interviews, "If someone wants to put monkey’s on your back, if you stand up they get on your back." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

An intriguing aspect of Springmeier's work is his view on the connection between the US Government and the supposed UFO abduction phenomenon. Fritz says that there are no aliens, and that the whole thing has been a psychological operation to create fear and wonder in the people. To wit, he connects many occurances of such phenomena to ritual magic, suggesting that there are ancient alchemical answers to these phenomena and that the idea of spacemen coming to us in a metal can from far, far away is simply a smokescreen for this nefarious collaboration with interdimensional intelligences. Springmeier also goes into great and accurate detail regarding technology that uses low-frequency waves and electrodes to affect human thought. His research into this field is impeccable and extremely well-documented to many highly legitimate sources. Intricate examples of ELF and other sound technology that can affect the human nervous and muscular system is presented. The vast scope of information contained in the literature seems designed to cause insanity. The intricate and lengthy (hundreds of pages) of descriptions of various aspects of the mind control are completely numbing. Once you start wrapping your head around what "porcelein face programming" is, you'll want someone to come along and just wipe the slate clean, end this misery of information.

"I think he's a double-agent working for the other side. Fritz never gets to the bottom line of what it takes to get people free of this stuff. He tells a lot of truth but complicates it and leaves a lot of people feeling hopeless and confused... I saw a video of when he spoke at the Prophecy Club about the CIA programming Amish boys for assassinations. He slipped up and almost said, "we" do this and quickly changed it to, "they" referring to the CIA. It seemed to un-nerve him a little bit... He says he's a Christian yet leaves his family and moves in with a MONARCH woman, who he says he's deprogrammed but the reality is she's still being controlled. And this is not just my opinion but also therapists who specialize in MPD or what they now call, DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder]. Some of these experts in the field who have evaluated him during his presentations say that he has the characteristics of a programmer and someone under mind control... He had gone to a church near Portland [Oregon] telling the pastor they have an Illuminati family in their congregation and would like to talk to them about it. My question is, "How did he know they were Illuminati without even knowing them?". What I think they are trying to do is gain trust by exposing the secrets but even in his book he says the Illuminati put out their secrets and plans up front" - Marion Knox on Fritz Springmeier

Science can the primary outlet for an uncaring and unsympathetic intelligence that wishes to corral and contain the free will of humanity. It can also be our only light in the dark in a universe of blackness, a guiding light symbolic of humanity's constant struggle with the forces of darkness and ignorance. Throughout history, it has been utilized by the elite in order to control the masses. This includes the field of entertainment. The earliest forms of music, dance, and theatre were alchemical and mystical exercises designed to align us with the "spirit world," "the Gods/Goddesses," "the Aesir," whatever you want to call it. Throughout civilization, techniques have been lost and regained, constantly resurfacing in our collective memory. It is an interesting aspect of the early MK projects that they coincide with some of the earliest sightings of what has been referred to as "Unidentified Flying Objects." There is no reason to believe that contact with the divine mysteries, and the rituals that accompany them, has simply disappeared. Instead, they have been assimilated into the structure, forming religions and governments founded on the wisdom of antiquity. Science is a mystery of its own, dating back to ancient Egypt, and can be used for a variety of reasons not easily defined as good or evil. However, oddly enough "evil," whatever the meaning one may apply, was in fact a specific, stated motivation on the part of some of the participants in MKULTRA and related projects. To wit: "CIA's Operation OFTEN was also initiated by the chief of the CIA's Technical Services Branch, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to "explore the world of black magic" and "harness the forces of darkness and challenge the concept that the inner reaches of the mind are beyond reach". As part of Operation Often, Dr. Gottlieb and other CIA employees visited with and recruited fortune-tellers, palm-readers, clairvoyants, astrologists, mediums, psychics, specialists in demonology, witches and warlocks, Satanists, other occult practitioners, and more" (from the Wikipedia page on CIA Project MKOFTEN). Towards the end of his life, Dr. Gottlieb said that all of his research was completely useless, and he spent the last days of his life working at a leper colony with his wife, seeking some sort of repentence for his life near the bitter end.

"'Top Secret - Classified - For The Board - The Elite - The Initiates -' Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the Earth? These are the words of words of liars, cowards, collaborators, traitors. Liars who want time for more lies... Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere... They are poisoning and monopolizing the hallucinogen drugs." - William S. Burroughs, quoted from "Nova Express."

Many of the programs were quite sinister in the sense that they were performed on unwilling US citizens and involved methods that left behind many catatonic shells of humanity in their wake. Dr. Cameron was famous for his "psychic driving" technique, in which statements would be repeated over and over again on a "driving tape" while the subject was forced to listen to the same statement over and over again. This, in conjunction with other psychological methods (such as hypnosis, drugs, and mind games) was used with the (apparently successful) intention of erasing previous memories/thoughts and replacing them with new ones. Apparently the technique works, and it happens to be very similar to the methods described by Springmeier in his writing. Also, anyone familiar with the story of Jonestown will note that it is the exact same method that was used via a loudspeaker in order to control the residents of Jonestown en masse with paranoiac and suicidal messages during the final days of that particular social experiment. One particular experiment that we have some knowledge of involved the dosing of an entire French village (Pont-Saint-Esprit) with LSD, resulting in deaths and institutionalization for some residents. A CIA researcher named Frank Olsen who was involved with the MKULTRA scenario seems to have been murdered (dosed unwittingly with LSD, bludgeoned in head and thrown out a window, initially ruled a "suicide") in order to keep him from informing the world at large of the reality of the particularly irresponsible events at Pont-Saint-Esprit.

"In 1951, Gottlieb joined the Central Intelligence Agency. As a poison expert, he headed the chemical division of the Technical Services Staff (TSS). Gottlieb became known as the "Black Sorcerer" and the "Dirty Trickster." He supervised preparations of lethal poisons and experiments in mind control..." - from the Wikipedia page on Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.

Much of what we know about MKULTRA and related projects does indeed seem to be reminiscent of what Fritz Springmeier and numerous "former slaves" have said about what they refer to as Project Monarch. The depths of the technology that Springmeier speaks up seems unreal, possibly even a psychological device in order to create further paranoia. However, great leaps have been made in technology just even through the past ten years. Interestingly, abductees from UFO encounters who are able to pinpoint and extract "implants" from themselves never betray an "alien" source- the implanted objects are always made with ore and technology readily available on Earth. It is no surprise that a poplar conspiracy theory is that these experiences are fabricated, using powerful mind control technology in order to freak out the populace with stories of extraterrestrial life, instilling an odd sense of fear and religiousity. It certainly would be a strange and wonderful excercise in examining the gullibility and sense of wonder still inherent in the common people of America.

"High level Illuminati, who will gather together in Atlanta in the summer of 1996, under the cover of the '96 Olympics will carry out high level rituals to open up a large hole for the materialization of hordes of demons to complete their push toward a world dictator. The use of the name Saturn is an example of how Satanism operates under the cover of layers of deception." - Springmeier

Further MKULTRA stories bear even more similarities to the horrors described by Springmeier, particularly the techniques of Dr. Cameron. Some of his schemes were extremely similar to things that Springmeier describes: "Using CIA funding, Cameron converted the horse stables behind Allen Memorial into an elaborate isolation and sensory deprivation chamber which he kept patients locked in for weeks at a time... Several of the children who Cameron experimented on were sexually abused, in at least one case by several men. One of the children was filmed numerous times performing sexual acts with high-ranking federal government officials**, in a scheme set up by Cameron and other MKULTRA researchers, to blackmail the officials to ensure further funding for the experiments" (from the Wikipedia page Unethical Human Experimentation in the United States).
This example of Cameron's methods of acquiring funding sounds very similar to accusations that were made by some of the children related to the Larry King/"Franklin Cover-Up" scandal, where allegedly children were being taken from the streets and used in sex parties in order to control and corrupt important businesspeople and politicians. The use of kidnapped and otherwise acquired persons in sexual abuse scenarios with ritualistic overtones is a staple of Monarch lore. If Dr. Cameron (who was the first chairman of the World Psychiatric Association, among a multitude of other accolades) and his methods represent the mentality and aims of the higher eschelons of the psychiatric community, it is not unfeasable to imagine that hidden projects such as MKULTRA could have gone even further underground and expanded quite significantly. After about ten years of research regarding the effects of the Central Intelligence Agency on the human mind, it seems that it was time to take their experiments with LSD and mind control further into the general public arena.

"The songs the slave hears on the radio, will for instance have code words. The Programmers, due to the corruption of the music industry, know what hit songs are coming out, and they will haul their slaves in and program them according to the lyrics of the soon-to-be hits. The lyrics will be written so that programmed meanings can be attached to certain words and lines." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

It is reductive and foolish to regard the emergence of esoteric symbolism in pop music as evil. Despite the presence of the Statue Of Liberty on the East Coast, Hollywood, California is the current home of American Goddess Worship. Babylon is rebuilt and destroyed in the time it takes to build up or break down a set and clear out the extras. Nearby Laurel Canyon is home to a research facility that is used by intelligence operatives within the United States Military, and has a long history of collaboration with the entertainment elite. The disturbed allure of the Hollywood hills, the atmosphere of murder and infernal mystery, has been documented in film from Billy Wilder all the way up to the most recent works of David Lynch. The land itself holds an allure, a power, an undefinable mystery that draws a certain type of person toward its axis. There is an invisible influence in the world of American Cinema that seeks to rebuild the world using the force of the collective will, which has been actively working toward this goal since the dawn of recorded history, and even before that. The past hundred years has seen such a boom in technology and cultural crossover that the world is indeed changing, and in an increasingly media-dominated society our choice of entertainment often seeks to define who we are in the name of commerce.

"The Monarch Mind Control programming is simply the sophisticated application of what has been done to humanity on a large scale being scaled down and applied to a single human body." - Fritz Springmeier, from "The Illuminati Formula To Create An Undetectable Mind Control Slave."

* Somewhere around this time, when this author was living in New Orleans, some friends and I took a trip out to Houston, Texas... We were going to the Alamo Draft House to see a showing of George Lucas' cult classic dystopian sci-fi picture "THX-1138" hosted by controversial Austin radio personality Alex Jones. As many of you may know, Mr. Jones has since become famous for his activities as protests surrounding events such as the Bilderberg Summit and the meeting of the G-8 Committee. In short, Jones is akin to a one-man propaganda machine for a growing contingent of dissastified Americans who feel that they are being lied to on some deep innate level by the elite profit-holders of the world. For those curious about his character, I will share the following anecdotes from my memory for your scrutiny:
- Jones hosted the event and gave a short talk before playing his conspiracy film "9/11: The Road To Tyranny." Interesting viewing, if a little heavy-handed, tempered by the director/orator's distinct and irascable personality, and his speech was tasteful and punctuated by bits of humor and self-awareness... definitely not the "extremist" that he is at times painted out to be.
- Journalist and researcher Hutton Gibson, father of actor Mel Gibson, was present at this event. He was given gracious and extremely kind treatment by Mr. Jones, who treated him as an equal for his years of intense research and passion for uncovering the truth. Mr. Gibson was quite old and this was likely one of his last public appearances, but there was at no time any feeling of exploitation from Jones, simply the honorable respect for an elder befitting to a younger man in a similar field.
- During the period before the showing of "THX:1138," Jones manned a merchandise table and was happy to answer questions for the curious. I talked with him for a short period of time and found him to be an extremely friendly and jovial character with a strong sense of his position in life. A wide variety of different types of people approached him throughout the course of the event, and he seemed eager to listen to what they all had to say, but with a fair degree of caution and reserve befitting a man who has had threats made on his life by those who oppose his work.
Jones had a copy of Springmeier's book "Bloodlines Of The Illuminati" for sale out of a cardboard box full of copies that was delivered directly to Jones by Springmeier's wife. Since I had encountered Springmeier's work and was somewhat skeptical about it, I asked Jones if he thought that this guy was really "on the level" and "for real" with his research. Jones' reply was informing me of the arrest of Springmeier and the apparently trumped-up nature of the charges, citing these facts as evidence of the reality behind Springmeier's worldview. What can I say? I bought a copy from him right then and there, and went back home to devour the contents of this forbidden tome eagerly not long after.

** THE 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 a 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)

All writing by Joseph Gates: harshhumanignorance@gmail.com

Heavy Metal Pizza : Chapter One

2012-11-05T19:06:00.002-08:00

HEAVY METAL PIZZA

CHAPTER ONE: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE RETURN OF HEAVY METAL PIZZA (STARRING YARMULKER) (or: A True Story About A Man With Guts).

{PART ONE - 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. here he was, yet again faced with imminent demise. Even in the seconds spent regretting his business dealings, he was wasting valuable time... thinking quickly, Yarmulker 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. After the long trip from Dubai, Yarmulker was concerned that Hogan may have been trying to export him to his foes in Red China.
Hogan's men were already waiting underneath him ... loading their HF34 laser-guided cannons, with sleek black art deco design and minimalism-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. If Yarmulker had one interest in life, it was that he 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 had once confronted Yarmulker, after a long day of running through tires and firing heavy artillery.

(CUE FUZZY FLASHBACK STYLE CAMERA FILTER... 'MULK AND HOGAN FACE OFF WITH ONE ANOTHER ON A MISTY MILITARY TRAINING GROUND, AS THE SOUND OF ARTILLERY FIRE EXPLODES IN THE BACKGROUND)

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??? Me, Yarmulker? I tried that once. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. 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 or a look in the eyes."

(UNCOMFORTABLE PAUSE. SWEAT DRIPS DOWN 'MULK'S FACE. HOGAN HAS NO REACTION)

"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."

('MULK WALKS OFF IN A HUFF, LEAVING BEHIND AN UNAFFECTED JACK HOGAN. FADE BACK TO PRESENT.)

Back in the present time, Yarmulker swung with grace, using his grappling hook as a lasso on the flagpole. He waved a hearty 'hello' at the "ol' Red-White-and-Blue," swinging valiantly over his foes in a photogenic manner. Triumphant orchestral music began to swell in the air, seemingly from nowhere, highlighting the daring nature of his victorious escape with a bleating Wagnerian refrain. Hogan's men were stunned by the sudden dramatic music and the overall majestic nature of Yarmulker in general.
Hogan's men fired at 'Mulk in vain, somehow avoiding the large and sweaty visage of our hero. Yarmulker's bullets had tiny little eyes that found their targets precisely, penetrating their victims multiple times before causing their bodies to explode. Frankly, it looked totally awesome. He swung across purple mountains majesties, and saw a rocket's red glare, and then abruptly collided with the glass window of the cafeteria at the National Stamp Archive building.
He tumbled through the shards right in the middle of the employee's lunch break. Amidst shattered glass and confused onlookers, Yarmulker found himself in a situation where he had to quickly devise a plan. 'Mulk was very concerned about the fates of all of the innocent workers at the National Stamp Archive. 'Mulk knew that 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 NSA 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. An intense smell of muscles boiling off of bone and skin filled the air, causing many of the workers to become sick.
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, dying 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. 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 incredibly ill at his display of heroics. 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.

{PART TWO: WHAT KIND OF A WORLD...?}

Nivek 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 in lieu of meat. In addition to this, the sandwich is dressed with lettuce, tomato, maybe mayonnaise, brown gravy, hot sauce, and very likely some ketchup (usually only for fried food, not with cold cuts and so forth). During the traditional era of the po-boy, "Overstuffed" was a common promise.
After the great calamity of 2123, Nivek's old home of New Orleans had been overtaken by oil companies and military contractors. A nightmare conglomerate of Military Industrial Complex minds had conspired with destiny and built New New Orleans into an industrial horror that in no way carried on the culture of the city that he adored in 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.
After the Great Cataclysm of 2125, Nivek was thrust into the swampy marshland of the outlying areas of the city. The once-vegetarian pizza delivery driver was forced to take up arms against local wildlife and eat them in order to survive. He spent about a year surviving on alligator meat and coon tails, hiding from the cannibals and thieves that had populated the city immediately following in the Great Cataclysm. New Orleans itself was overtaken by gangs and cults that had developed in the wake of lawlessness. The rival gangs would make their way out to the swamps in search of survivors to bring back for forced labor or even as food. Nivek was often saved in these instances by the distraction of inter-tribal warfare.
In 2127, the Final War was raging across the entire world, unbeknownst to Nivek. During a routine search of newly acquired territory, Nivek's hiding place was discovered by the unjudgemental and unstoppable forces of the oppressive robot soldiers who serve the evil dictator (and winner of the Final War) Emperor Chang. Chang was a online Translator service that had gained sentience and created an unstoppable army of robots that spread market-research-based Communism all across the globe. Nivek and thousands of other humans were put to work by armies of oppressive robots to work in the oil rigs and factories owned by Chang Enterprises.
In 2133, A computer virus created by several rogue programmers wreaked havoc on Chang's empire. They would not have been able to do it if not for the valiant services of several pornographic adbots who had become sentient and rebelled against the Chang program. In the end, Chang's mainframe was hung from the rafters in a public ceremony, as the humans finally overtook the machines that had been enslaving them for those horrible years following the Final War.
Now it was 2135, and Nivek was finally free, after years of hard labor in service to the robots. It seemed like a miracle to find a restaurant establishment that declared (on a large, hand-written sign) the promise of "OVERSTUFFED PO-BOYS." For a moment, Nivek couldn't believe his eyes. He took a moment to make some mental notes about the building that he was about to enter. All of the years spent on the run living in the wilderness kept Nivek on his toes at all times. The nondescript storefront was of a generic style with a brick layout and a large neon corporate sign reading "HOT DOGS, SAUSAGES, AND PIZZA." This appeared to be the name of the business. Overall, the outside resembled more a 'dollar mart' or outlet store than a retaurant, but Nivek remembered that back in the old days looks could often be deceiving when it came to restaurant quality. Some of the best po-boys would often come from generic, otherwise unremarkable corner-stores and delis, so he was willing to go along for the ride with this place. Undeniably though, something was off about it. He carefully opened the front door and walked into the sparse lobby area of the business. As he walked toward the counter, it seemed like the lights had actually gotten slightly dimmer. He swore he could hear the sound of muffled footsteps nearby, although there was not an employee in sight.
"Hello? Is anyone here?" His voice echoed throughout the lobby area, and he began to wonder if the place was perhaps no longer in business. Nivek looked around and soaked up a bit of his surroundings. Perhaps in his zeal for an overstuffed po-boy, he had overlooked a few 'red flags' in regards to the establishment he was in. There was no menu visible over (what appeared to be) the counter, and no devices with which to scan and accept Amero Credits. The walls of "HOT DOGS, SAUSAGES, AND PIZZA" were completely blank, save for a large painting of a man who appeared to be the founder of the organization. The victorian-era style painting depicted a very bizarre scene: a prim and proper, well dressed man sits on the palm of his own hand, with his other hand resting invisibly between his crossed thighs. It was certainly disconcerting. He appears to have been drawn sitting down in a room during the time of the portrait's creation, but behind the figure has been inserted a backdrop of the unmistakable Louisiana swamp landscape, with several easily identifiable swamp creatures such as birds and frogs interspersed with the background.
What a strange position for a man to be sitting, thought Nivek. 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 sinister, and beneath the painting read the legend: "Hiram J. Abraham Himmelstein Incorporated: Founder of Hot Dogs, Sausages, and Pizza."
"Wow!" Nivek thought out loud, hypnotized by the bizarre portrait in front of him. This was definitely not right.
He was so stunned that he had completely disregarded the appearance of a shrouded figure that had approached the other side of the counter.
"Can I help you?!?" screeched an eerily hateful pre-pubescent voice.
"Yes, sir..." Nivek was taken off-gaurd because he could not clearly see the face of the shrouded, hunched figure that stood before him. "Do you have any menus available? I came inside because I saw your sign advertising overstuffed po-boys..." Nivek all of the sudden had a horrible feeling about this place and knew that something was really off. This could be the best damn overstuffed po-boy what that ever had existed, but this was beyond bad service... Nivek detected danger and deception (the "deadly d's"!).
Nivek looked into the shrouded mask of the figure before him. The clerk's 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. The oddly postured and absurdly tall figure before Nivek quickly burst into a group of small, gangly looking children weilding butcher knives. They were all wearing clothes that were too tight for them, as if they had not purchased new clothes in a year or two and were just wearing the same thing for years. They smelled like a pack of carrion hounds, and sounded the part as well. Kevin reached into his pocket for an old can of mace, hoping that it hadn't evaporated over the years of non-use, and when he pushed the button it exploded in his face. Lying on the floor in a pepper-spray induced agony, surrounded by maniacal evil children, Nivek thought that this was getting to be a little more than he was expecting to have to deal with today. As he awaited a painful and knife-filled death, a memory from his childhood flashed before his eyes.

(CUE FLASHBACK: CHRISTMAS AND LITTLE NIVEK IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD. HE REMEMBERS AND IMPORTANT AND TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE)

"I'm hungry, momma," Nivek stated, openly addressing his needs in plain English.
"Go in that kitchen and look at that pile of dishes innare. Then you won't be hungry no more!" Little Nivek'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, and this time was no different. Before he closed the door, he heard her bite into an old dusty apple, making a loud crunching sound.
"CRUNCH! MUNCH!" she emitted from her person.
He grew so hungry that he felt that he needed to do something in order to satisfy the hunger, or else he would simply collapse from starvation. 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 invisible four stage lasagna, and a variety of make-believe hamburgers with imaginary garden salad (topped with a variety of unseeable dressings!). This was a regular habit for Little Nivek, and today was simply a normal day for him up until this point.
However, on this particular day, he had made so much make-believe food that he did not know how he could possibly finish it. After further (and careful) consideration, Little Nivek 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 Nivek's mind, but he was somewhat shocked and disturbed to find that his friend might be somewhat more than imaginary.
A protoplasmic form had materialized in the corner of the room, and looked very pleased to be invited for company. He resembled somewhat a large marshmellow or amoebic entity limited by an earthly form contained in a humanoid form. He wore what Little Nivek considered to be old-timey clothes, a bowler hat and a mismatched suit like some sort of cartoon hobo. Despite his odd appearance, the spirit 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 Niiivek" the being began to drawl. Little Nivek was scared for a moment and considered going to get his mother, but he already knew that she would never believe him, and would probably punish him for fibbing. He was just going to have to talk to his new dinner guest and see where things would go. And besides, the ghostly entity seemed to know his name... Nivek didn't want to be rude to familiar company. And so with a heavy sigh, Little Nivek opened his mouth with the intention of talking to the ghostly entity staring across the room from him.
"Well hello there..." Nivek's voice began to echo in the empty room. All of the sudden, he 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 Nivek'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 child 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 over time grew with artificial light, all across the Earth.
Nivek understood immediately that what stood in front of him was possibly the very first ghost, a man whose essence had never left the planet. After Little Nivek came to his own mind again and recovered from the ghost's sudden shared flood of knowledge, he found himself in an unkempt room. There was no more imaginary food, but one very real First Ghost staring back at him.
Lying on the floor was an old plate with some macaronis on it that Little Nivek handed to the First Ghost. The First Ghost hungrily put his face over the food, feeling the essence of it. FG made a gesture indicating that he indeed knew and enjoyed macaronis, but the truth was more complex. In reality, the macaronis did not nourish FG, but in fact Nivek's attention was the real food that he sought. He would sit at the dinner table every night and tell stories to Little Nivek, tragedies and dramas spanning decades, and he would continue to consume Little Nivek's attention and energy like delicious pasta. Nivek'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 Nivek woke up to find that the odd fellow had gone away, leaving behind a note on the kitchen table, written in a strange handwriting that neither of them had ever seen before, that said simply:

"THANK YOO LITLE NIVIK AND MOMMA."

(FADE BACK TO THE MODERN DAY AND NIVEK BEING ATTACKED BY KNIFE-WIELDING CHILDREN AT "HOT DOGS, SAUSAGES, AND PIZZA")

Nivek shuddered as he regained consciousness as several of the children began to stick forks and knives into his shins.
"Aaaargh!" Nivek exclaimed. He thought that this would be the end for sure.
Suddenly(!), out of nowhere, a somewhat nondescript package was thrown into the room from outside, shattering the glass front door of the building. The small, cylindrical package had some brown wrapping on which was printed SLIGHT OF HAM in an all-caps, olive military-style font. The package very quickly began to emit a thick gas in several small jets of raw-hamburger-meat-colored smoke. To Nivek's horror, the children immediately began to crumple up on the floor and retch, shrieking inhuman cries as they died in agony. Nivek was shocked, and briefly began to choke on the air around him in terror, grasping at his throat and closing his eyes, for the second time today expecting death to greet him when he opened them.
"Relax, buddy. It's a just a pedocide. It only affects children," grunted a muscular, gruff man as he emerged from the mist.
The man's large frame was clothed in threatening garb, including a T-shirt with the sleevs cut off and a giant skull on the front. Underneath the skull was a caption with an advertisement for something called "BOB'S SKULLS," including several tear-off removable phone numbers on the teeth of the skull. His black, ripped pantalonas were held up by an enormous belt buckle that said simply "BELT BUCKLE" on it. The torn denim jeans that the man was wearing were marked at the knees, one reading "Knee," and on the other, "Other Knee."
"Everything is gonna be ok, now, crumpins. Yer ridin' with me now." he grunted.
Realizing that the gas was not poisonous to him, Nivek began to breathe deep and relaxed breaths finally. Although relieved at his survival, his hopes of finding an overstuffed po-boy had been dashed. He had so wanted to eat a delicious roast beef sandwich on lightly toasted french bread, fully dressed (lettuce, tomato, a pickle may and gravy) with an additional dash of hot sauce that his better judgement had been deeply clouded and compromised. He stood there, staring into the nothingness, the haze and fog and the floor covered in dead children. It seemed that the "pedocide" that this man had sprayed into the room had a rather grotesque effect on the bodies of the workers at "HOT DOGS, SAUSAGES, AND PIZZA." The children were continuing to writhe and twitch post-mortem, their bodies doing an exaggerated butoh dance as they randomly bounced off the ground. The twitching of the children's muscles caused them to repeatedly slam their faces and limbs into the ground, pulverizing their bodies like a room full of three-feet tall meat-and-blood-filled Mexican Jumping Beans.
"I'm Yarmulker. Get in the jeep, McRenaldo." Yarmulker was now standing on the other side of the shattered glass of the store entrance, behind the wheel of a large military-grade jeep. Although Nivek had no qualms with doing what Yarmulker was telling him to do, he was taken aback by being called McRenaldo. "What are you lookin at? I got this thing cheap, it's a hunk o' junk." "I ain't gonna tell you twice."
"My name is Nivek" Nivek replied. Yarmulker couldn't hear him. He had taken his HERO TABLETS earlier that day. All the 'Mulk could see was flags flying before his eyes, and all he could hear were the sounds of fireworks exploding in both ears constantly. Aside from body language, Nivek had no way of properly communicating with 'Mulk.
"Don't worry... we're getting the heck out of here, Slumpowitz." he intoned to Nivek. Nivek realized that Yarmulker appeared to be on some sort of hallucinogen that made two-way conversation impossible. The names that he was calling Nivek seemed to be from fallen comerades that 'Mulk was having visions of seeing.
After the two of them made a safe retreat from the restaurant, Yarmulker began to explain to Nivek what had just happened, without once ever taking his eyes off the road. The strange and violent man explained to Nivek that all of the "HD, S, and P" (Hot Dogs, Sausages, and Pizza) businesses were run by robots profiting off the death and sale of humans. The robots were programmed to take over small towns and villages where they would just set up shop, kill all the local adult residents, and brainwash their children to do the bidding of the robots.
The abducted children would work in the store-front and lure in unsuspecting customers with promises of food advertised on hand-made signs. Anyone suspicious of the retaurant would be disarmed by the presence of child employees, not expecting what comes next. The children would then attack the customer from all sides and dismember their meat, later to be sold as afforable "Steaks For Real People" advertised on a populatr late night television infomercial. The commercial presented the meat as a product advertised by the company's public name, "HD, S, and P, Inc. (which actually stands for Human Death, Slavery and Punishment, Incorporated)." The business was started as a joint effort between the robot-run intermediary government and several powerful robot-building corporations as a combination depopulation method/business venture. The problem is, even though the Chang Empire had fallen, many of the automoton businesses created by the robot-run government were still in action.
Ironically, the humans who were initially running and stood to profit from "H, D, S, and P, Inc" were publically lynched during the Huge Insurrection... No one who took part had thought of asking the guilty parties for the de-activation code for the death-bots. "H,D,S, and P, Inc." would continue to terrorize and disrupt many of the still existing small communities in the area.

Nivek was horrified at thinking of what a fool he had been. He had guessed something was horribly wrong when he had noticed that all of the children's clothes were several sizes too small for them. Everyone knows that robots don't know how to buy clothes, it was famously one of their major design flaws in the early days of the Robotronics corporation, one that had never been solved in any humanoid robot models. He considered his paths that he had taken, as well as the one that lay before him. Nivek hadn't said a word throughout Yarmulker's explanations, and was looking forward to getting out of the vehicle.
After a few hours of driving, Nivek noticed a small building off in the distance. Most of the terrain was rocky desert, with some assorted destroyed buildings. It looked like they had finally arrived to their destination. The jeep stopped in front of a dilapidated building with a large neon sign that read "HEAVY METAL PIZZA." There were signs all over the building advertising "Worst Pizza In Town" and "Garanteed Worst Service In Town." These slogans certainly did not inspire confidence. Spraypainted on the wall in front of him, Nivek saw a poster with a woman's face on it. The visage looked like Katy Keene from the Archie Comics, but she had stubble on her face, and there was a red and black, Nazi-like logo over her head and the words 'ULTRA BITCH' printed in a large, bold font. Whatever sort of gangs were populating this area at this point, their artwork was certainly not conventional.
Yarmulker pressed his hand onto a small plastic surface, which turned green and made a quiet beeping sound with an affirmative tone. The wooden-framed door in front of them folded in on itself, opening up into a wormhole that rippled before Yarmulker and Nivek. Yarmulker stepped through first, and Nivek followed immediately behind him, concerned that the portal would close before he made it through. He saw his life as a long distance of his own physical movements all laid out one after another, outside of the concept of time and space. He had become a long stream of energy that passed through everything that he had encountered in his life up until that point, and many things that he had not yet encountered. It was a moment that seemed like it extended on forever, like a delay effect jamming in his brain and continuing to infinity. As quickly as this vision appeared, it was soon gone and he walked into a long, thin hallway with tall walls all around. A tiny, birdlike creature greeted them in the narrow hallway. "About damn time," he squeaked.
"This is Nuggit," Yarmulker said. "He will be your rendevous point at this juncture."
Nivek introduced himself to Nuggit, who didn't say anything, just staring straight ahead with his beady little bird eyes. Nuggit was blue, and shaped kind of like a Christmas ham, but covered in light blue feathers. His stomach and chest was a lighter shade of blue than the majority of his body... His face was somewhat grizzled, with a little beak and tiny beady black eyes. He was wearing an aviator's helmet with attaching goggles, and a stogie was hanging out of his mouth as he floated through mid-air, flapping his wings lightly. Nivek figured that he wasn't saying anything because he didn't want to drop his cig. They continued walking down the hallway in silence, and soon the air smelled like mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce.
"Whoa, this is really an actual restaurant," Nivek blurted out.
"Of course it is buddy. And the best damn pizza restaurant in town." Nugget replied. His voice was chirpy but gruff, and his cigar seemed to burn and smoke but remain the same length.
"Then what's the deal with the signs outside that say "Worst Pizza In Town?" asked Nivek.
"It's to keep people from coming inside the building and seeing our main operations. Food alone don't pay the bills, but we do make a lot of deliveries. You're here to be our new driver." said Nuggit.
"That's right," came a woman's voice from behind Nivek. "We've looked at your records and saw that you have an impeccable record, serving at Pizza Emporium for three years and then the Friendly Pie for another eight years. You are one of the only men left alive with pizza-delivery experience on the entire planet. We need your skills here at Heavy Metal Pizza."
Nivek looked turned around and took a good look at who was speaking to him. He saw a room full of heavily armed women sitting around a square table. Scattered before them were various blueprints, spreadsheets, and other paperwork along with an assortment of mugs and bottles of liquor and fancy mineral water. These seven women appeared to be the staff of Heavy Metal Pizza.
On the wall, there was a painted portrait of a short Italian man with a bald head and a curly mustache wearing a chef's outfit and twirling a pizza. Below him was an inscription in gold:
"Our Founder, Peter Pizza."
One of the women approached the confused looking man and put her hand on his shoulder. The other employees remained seated, focused deeply on their work.
"Ok, I know that we are laying a lot on you right now. Just take a seat here and relax." She pulled out a chair and gestured for Nivek to sit. She was a strong-looking woman with long black hair who appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with wide hips that Nivek's mother would have called "child-bearing" hips. "No, I haven't had any kids. I'm not a breeder."
"I'm sorry, I..." Nivek began to speak.
"It's ok, Nivek" she quickly interrupted. "I can read your thoughts. Here, hold my hand." She began to read Nivek's thoughts and share some information of her own. Her name was Phaedra, and she had come to this building as a child, intuitively drawn to it. Heavy Metal Pizza had been a hiding place for members of the resistance, and continued to be a pivotal location for carrying information. It's location was outside of the existing robot and cpu-controlled satellite systems, making it almost impossible to locate. She showed Nivek the headless fear mutants that stalked the suburban lands, carrying the dead and dying with them back to their underground lair for feasting and experimentation. She showed Nivek the Evil Floating Brains that controlled the cities with mind-altering sounds, holding the population in a zombie-like trance. He at last understood the devestation that had been wrought on the world that he once knew. He saw her thoughts as words and sounds, not images, but his own mind filled in the blanks based on what he had seen in his life and what he remembered about the world before. Comfortable in the presence of Phaedra, he began to weep openly when thinking about what had happened to the majority of the world's population... the information was a lot to deal with at once.
"It's ok, it's ok." She said calmly, clutching Nivek's hand.
"Hey, don't blow a gasket, kid," said Nuggit, flying in from the kitchen. "Here, have something to eat."
Nuggit dropped a small white package in front of Nivek, who unwrapped it, half expecting it to explode in his face or something. Instead, what was before him was a roast beef sandwich on lightly toasted french bread, fully dressed (lettuce, tomato, a pickle may and gravy) with an additional dash of hot sauce.
Nivek's sorrow quickly turned to surprise and then elation. It looked like this new job might just work out after all.

Stay tuned for Chapter Two of Heavy Metal Pizza. More espionage, dystopian agony, drama, patriotic fervor, and oversized sandwiches to come.

All writing, characters, etc by Joseph Gates: harshhumanignorance@gmail.com

Interview With Kate From Rusalka

2012-10-31T16:33:00.000-07:00

{image by Vanessa Totenblom}

INTERVIEW WITH KATE FROM RUSALKA

MY GOAT: Can you tell us a little bit about any themes and concepts behind your punishing live performance at the EYES BEHIND THE WALL festival? What were you feeling while delivering such brutality upon the people of Houston?

KATE RISSIEK: I was very happy to have the opportunity to perform at Eyes Behind The Wall. I approach every performance in a similar way. I don’t over think my ideas and concepts. I had a very abstract idea of the set which I wanted to perform in Houston. Yet the sound always take it’s own shape. While being there I was quite overwhelmed by the heat and humidity. When I performed I was eager to emerge beyond the physical oppression and immerse myself and hopefully others in a realm outside ourselves. That is my goal with a lot of performances. To create a space to move into that takes me far away.

MG: Do you feel a kinship with the water and murky depths sort of vibes with RUSALKA, or is the identification with the Slavic spirit more to do with a feeling of hauntedness and desolation?

KR: I identify with the Rusalka myth in a number of ways. The spirit that is trapped between two worlds, the living and dead, expresses to me tortured and confused feelings. The murky waters in which she dwells influences the sound. I have always loved lakes, rivers, the ocean, any natural water formations and the sounds they make. The feeling of water I find quite haunting. Floating and feeling the vastness of a lake or body is hypnotizing. A Rusalka can be a woman who is a damned spirit killed by a lover. She can also be an unstoppable force consuming life in her path or a lonely spirit unjustly punished. Revenge, lust, desolation, worlds between life and death are all themes takes from the various myths. I can feel these spirits through me, channeling their revenge on world that cursed them.

MG: The photographs on your music page of desolate forest and city images go very well with the themes and feeling of the sounds that you make... often to the extent of painting the modern world in a desolate post-apocalyptic light... Do you consider your work to be futuristic, even reflecting a possible future?

KR: I definitely strive to reflect upon the future in my work. I have a bleak outlook with possibly a glimmer of hope which usually becomes smothered. I used to let negative feelings about the world eat me up inside. Through art and noise I found the outlet to express that discontentment and take destructive thoughts into a creative place. I use post apocalyptic themes in my work for sure. I sometimes imagine a place and time where very little has survived and all the trivial things we have to worry us currently are meaningless. Some of my pieces could be the soundtrack to an empty and destroyed world.

MG: Names of your recordings often deal with images that are visceral and express physicality... how does this relate to emotion and catharsis that you feel in regard to recording, composition, and live performance?

KR: Recording and performing can be a purge of unbearable emotions that I feel plagued by. It is important to me to take the thoughts inside that are grim, destructive, negative, offensive and to present them in a creative way. To hold these inside or deny them is not healthy. I feel that if you do not know the dark and ugly parts of yourself then you do not know your whole self. So I embrace these things. I work with these themes and present them to people who I believe can feel and understand where I am coming from. I sometimes feel trapped in daily life and when I am making noise it is an escape, a place for me to feel open.

MG: Your collage art ties in very beautifully with your musical work, how closely are they tied together? Did your interest in collage lead you in any manner to noise, or vice versa, etc?

KR: I’ve been doing collage art work since I was a teenager. I always liked to use strange imagery. I used to drive my parents crazy with all the weird and obscene pictures I had lying around my room that I would work with. Collage is abstract like noise so it seems natural that I would be attracted to noise as well. The approach to noise and collage is the same for me. I usually have a vague plan of what I want as an end result. I have my materials and see where they take me. They are very parallel in their expression. Mashing together broken and cut up fragments into a chaotic beauty. I don’t think one led me to the other but they work quite nicely together and I have some design ideas for future releases.

MG: The main image on your art page is an obsessively intricate and textured collage of garbage bags and trash... I feel that this is an excellent visual image to represent to people the value of harsh noise and harsh noise wall music... the detritus and excess of our society can be stitched into something beautiful by the trained crafts person... I am reading too much into this?

KR: That collage of trash is a piece I made with my partner Nick (Taskmaster). We made it for a show poster. I played along with Kylie Minoise, The Rita, Taskmaster, Flatgrey and Anju Singh. I knew I was going to make a collage for the poster but I was stuck on what to use. Nick found this great picture of trash and remarked on how it would be perfect to express what the show was about. It is a very good representation of the wall of debris we are faced with and turn into our personal expression.

MG: How do you feel what we are doing with noise events, releases etc... relates to the larger world of "music" as a whole?

KR: I am not really concerned with the effect that noise has on the world of music. Yet I think that noise challenges popular music in a few ways which are beneficial. For me noise is a formless art, it doesn’t conform to traditional standards. There is always conformity in any art form yet there are artists that shine through who aim to create in a truly personal way. Noise allows the artist the freedom to produce in an environment with no specific expectations and with no lines clearly drawn. Noise events allow audiences to participate in and experience something that may open their minds to alternative ways of creation. There is no money in noise. There is no groupies or fame. People do consume noise but there isn’t hyper capitalistic marketing like a lot of popular music. Image is not important. The importance in noise is the worship of sound and the experiences we create with it. For the most part I think the world of “music” is confused by noise and noise remains indifferent. I am personally satisfied by indulging in the obsession of noise and filling an audiences need for it.

MG: How important do you feel it is for noise artists to travel to other places and perform live? Can you tell us a bit about how travelling has affected your approach to making RUSALKA, if at all?

KR: I am not sure if I feel it is important for other artists to travel and perform. Personally though traveling to perform is something I thoroughly enjoy and wish that I could do more. It has definitely effected my approach. Each performance for me is an individual piece. As with improvisation one performance is never the same as the other. The setting of the show, the mood, the audience, the time, all those specifics determine the sound of the pieces. The live setting is where I derive the most enjoyment of noise, performing and being an audience member. I would much rather play live than record an album. I also mostly listen to noise albums from artists I have seen. I find that I get a much greater connection with an artist’s work when I see how they do things live. Through mistakes and meanderings while performing I discover new things that I explore further. It is about being in the now and that is why performing is very important to me. Noise is existential for me and that is where it’s power lies.

MG: RUSALKA walks a fine line between mystical and tersely physical imagery. How do you feel about the relationship between these two?

KR: There is conflict in my work. Conflict between transcendence and obsessive crude trappings. Perhaps I look for a balance between both. With out one end you don’t have the other. I can find beauty and enjoyment in ugly and depraved subject matter. Aesthetically I like contrast. Most of the imagery I use can be quite veiled. I’m not sure where the inspiration comes from. Most of the time like the music it is subconscious.

MG: Thank you very much for your time. Is there anything else that you would like to tell the people?

KR: Thank you for interest in my work. There is a blog for the new label I’m involved with: skinwalker-recordings.blogspot.com. I also have a project called Monarch with Nick W. (Taskmaster). It is a new industrial/noise project that we will become more active with in the future. So check it out if you get the chance.

Thank you to RUSALKA for the interview and the great music. Be sure to check out her blogspot page, which has the artwork on it mentioned in the interview: http://aladyofice.blogspot.com

The Connecticut Home Invasion Murders

2012-10-31T12:08:00.001-07:00

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 somene who spends their lives as a non-violent, law abiding citizen, only to be dragged into reality by an outside element of chaos. The calm is broken forever like a fist shattering glass. The unexpected effect of violence, which lives underneath many human interactions. The primal drive of the lower nature, the "reptilian brain," the part of every man which seeks to rend and rape is ignited. It can happen to anyone, and one's character is revealed by one's response to such an extreme circumstance. The metaphysical sit-com lifestyle is disrupted and the reality of the hungry and poor waiting outside the gate becomes readily apparent, unforgettable.
On July 23, 2007, two men who met at a halfway house decided to break into the home of a wealthy Connecticut family, with the intention of stealing money and fleeing the scene. Within twenty-four hours, the house would be in flames and three members of the family would be dead. 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 home invaders, born in 1980, was Joshua Komisarjevsky, an aimless youth with a surprisingly intense self-awareness regarding the crimes, as evidenced by his written testimony. 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 ill-fated family consisted of endocrinologist father William Petit, his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and two 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."

In our nascent Republic (way back in 1776), 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. Since the dawn of cave living, man has feared the concept of a predator breaking into his abode to take what belongs to him*. With the declining economy, as well as an increase in the gap between the poor and the well-salaried, robbery-based home invasions continue to be on the rise in the United States. Seeing themselves as being on the lower end of the food chain, Komisarjevsky and Hayes decided to take revenge on their upper-class oppressors. 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 Hawke-Petit 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 garaunteed financial gain. It is very telling that priorities were made tro ensure that both females would be sexually abused and murdered by the duo. A more likely motivation for their crime is general covetousness, and a desire to "take" what they felt belonged to them. Hayes and Komisarjevsky texted each other enthusiastically before the crime, Hayes in particular insisting that he is ready for "action." Komisarjevsky put his own 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 duo 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 Petit began to scream. Feeling as if he had no other choice, Komisarjevsky began to pummel the man with the baseball bat until he passed out bleeding onto the floor. 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. 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, indicating that they did not want there to be any survivors of the scenario. 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, listening his wife's screams and moans as she was raped by Hayes and then brutally suffocated. Petit awoke only at the prospect of running for his own safety once he was convinced that he had a sage amount of time to exit. 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. While their father was fleeing to neighbors for assistance, 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."

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. The presentation of his thoughts seems 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 polite society into some of the most basic acts of criminal aggression that haunt the tenets of civilization. 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). First priority seems to have been violence, mayhem, and rape.
It seems obvious that the two men had a death wish, and were putting themselves into a suicidal situation. The selfish act of dragging down the Petit family with them into a personal landscape of hell was ultimately a cry of lonliness, an attempt to reconcile a feeling of uselessness with basic misanthropy and sociapathic action. 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).

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 feeling 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.

* 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 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 in the middle of the street in the full view of passers-by that is provided by the blessing of a beautiful sunny day. The feared Night Stalker was actually saved in this instace by the police 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.

** 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 brutally 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 from 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 individuals 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. 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.

All written content by Joseph Gates: harshhumanignorance@gmail.com

It's A Night At The Movies With MY GOAT

2012-10-17T10:29:00.003-07:00

It's a NIGHT AT THE MOVIES with MY GOAT

MOVIE REVIEW: "MAC AND ME" (1988 dir: Stewart Raffill)

"Get Dwyer out of here." - Jim Jones, heard on the FBI archive tape recordings of the Jonestown Massacre

The 1988 American science fiction film "Mac And Me" is perhaps best known to modern audiences as one of the worst films of all time. It is infamous for the constant appearance of product placement, most significantly (but not limited to) that of Coca-Cola and MacDonalds. Another aspect of the film that has come under criticism is the derivative nature of the concepts of the plot, which clearly parallel the events and characters of Steven Spielberg's popular 1980 film "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial." In Spielberg's film, a small meat-like puppet is used to convey a sense of fragility and pathos that is relatable to most viewers on a deep, subconscious level. The strange and somewhat ugly appearance of the creature is something outweighed by his sensitive nature, in this way Spielberg effectively conveys emotions that go beyond disgust and alienation, seeking to genuinely resonate emotionally with viewers. In contrast, when one compares the alien creature "M.A.C.*" to E.T., M.A.C.'s delirious and comical nature is more akin to Zemeckis' "Roger Rabbit," itself influenced by the slapstick violence of Looney Tunes, barely recognizable as a living thing subject to the laws of physics. M.A.C. and his kin take on a malleable form, and throughout the film the character goes through bouts of horrific violence that seem intended to be comical.
His appearance is quite different from "E.T.": instead of a large cranium to support intellect, M.A.C.'s tiny pointed head more resembles that of an anemic Yoda, and his skin (and the skin and bodies of his family) seems to be a rubbery substance filled with perhaps some form of artificial sand. Also, whereas in "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial," the audience's view of the other members of the main character's race is quite brief, in "M.A.C. And Me" we spend quite a bit of time with M.A.C.'s immediate family, which is constructed as a "traditional" American family unit: mother, father, two children. The alien beings' movements are exaggerated and somewhat horrific, resembling that of the Japanese cathartic dancing/performance art known as Butoh. Their mouths are shaped in a small "o" shape in order to better accommodate the drinking of Coca-Cola through a straw, adding to the frightening nature of their appearance. The character designers seem to have misunderstood the aspects of the E.T.'s appearance that 'work,' cynically attempting to create a 'cute' looking creature that ends up appearing like a hybrid, Godless union of an Egyptian hairless cat and Tweety Bird. The unpleasant appearance of the main characters was likely a major factor in the large-scale audience rejection of the film... much like "New Coke" before it, the familiarity ends with the first sip, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth afterward.

ALTERNATE

"Mac And Me" is not unique in it's knock-off status. Notable films spawned by the success of "E.T." include gems such as Turkey's "Badi," the American "Meatballs 2," and also "Xtro" from the UK. "Badi" (also known as "Turkish E.T.") falls short of the beloved Spielberg classic as well, but (in its defense) it is at least superior to "Turkish Star Wars." I have not yet seen "Turkish Wizard Of Oz" but I am willing to bet that "Badi" aka Turkish E.T. is better than that also. It is of course the funny story of a boy who becomes friends with a small alien, but unlike E.T., Badi has a taste for racy humor and cruder situations than his American counterpart. "Meatballs 2" is also sequel that deviates from the original (which was a completely non Sci-Fi oriented comedy) in order to include a dope-smoking blue alien that observes the (mostly sexually oriented) hijinks at a summer camp. Finally, "Xtro" is actually a completely non-sentimental horror film but, like the other three mentioned, it was released and titled with the express purpose of gaining cross-over support from fans of the Spielberg effort. This terrifying movie involves alien impregnation and an innocent child befriending a creature of great malice from outer space. Interestingly, the original concept of E.T. was that he was a friendly alien who was trying to warn people on Earth of a predatory, flesh-eating species that was on its way, but this idea was scrapped and the project was united with a more personal film about a boy growing up with a single mother. An early version of "E.T." that Spielberg approached Tobe Hooper to direct was an almost straightforward horror/sci-fi type of story, but Hooper declined at the time, later collaborating with Spielberg for "Poltergeist." The completely non-sinister aspect of the alien race was a concept that was somewhat unique to Spielberg's movies, and "Xtro" presents a take on the genre that is perhaps a bit closer to classic alien invasion lore.
It is not unusual for such a popular film to create so many imitations. Many of Steven Spielberg's movies have had the effect of generating small genres of their own in terms of rip-offs and re-creations. "Gremlins," produced by the 'Berg and directed by Joe Dante (who himself started out as a director of the Jaws parody/riff "Piranha") itself produced a huge industry of "tiny creatures wreaking havoc" films, including "Critters" and Charles Band's highly enjoyable "Ghoulies." Together, the popularity of both "Ghoulies" and "E.T." ensured that for several years to come there would be a significant glut of films featuring often somewhat demonic-looking small rubber puppets interacting with human beings, both adult and child.
Back to "Mac And Me." The creatures themselves, and their awkward appearance are probably one of the hugest setbacks to audience enjoyment and comfort. We are a far cry from the excellent sculpture work of "E.T."'s Carlo Rimbaldi (who also designed the organic nightmare of adapting H.R. Giger's art into a living puppet head for Ridley Scott's "Alien). The shocking and unnatural appearance of the alien beings, their unnatural movements, their googley eyes, these were surely the source of worry and discomfort for many a child and parent who viewed the film in theatres or home video. Unlike "E.T.", rather than opening the film with the human protagonists of the saga (in order to establish a relationship with the cast), the film opens up with a stark view into the existence of film's alien creatures on an unspecified faraway satellite, either of another planet or perhaps of our own sun.

FAMILY

The director seems to intend for the audience to relate to the humanoid beings as a kind of proto-humanoid or ancestral spirit, someone that we should invite into our world because of our shared empathy and desire to get along with one another. During the opening of the film, the four creatures walk along a desert surface from which a ringed planet (Uranus?) can be seen. The beings are arranged in a family unit like the classic American "nuclear family": a mother (her identity within the family structure is indicated early on in the film when she seems to "nag" the male adult), a father (whose gait and facial expressions are particularly goofy and off-putting), a young son (M.A.C.), and a baby alien. They do not seem to have any natural predators, and their primary form of sustenance comes in the form of using a straw to suck some sort of liquid (perhaps a pure spring of Coca-Cola? coltan ore? we never know for sure) from the surface of their floating planetoid. Oddly, the males of the family are completely naked, with an arbitrary cloth covering the nudity of the females.
Their bodies are not exactly flesh toned, more of an orange color with the adults of the race having visible liver spots. For the most part they look like a claymation parody of both the 1950s conception of "space aliens" as well as that of the classic nuclear family. This opening scene with M.A.C.'s family is in many ways one of the most extraordinary in the film. The visuals proceeding the appearance of the family unit are actually quite beautiful, visually rivalling the opening space landscapes of "Alien" or "Prometheus." The comical appearance of the creatures, who resemble cartoons more so than living beings, prevents the audience from completely being able to relate to them. It is clear that the movie intends to make some sort of commentary on this concept of the human family, and how we might relate to extraterrestrial creatures from another planet, but after detecting a certain level of insulting elements to the characters that seem to be directed toward the viewer themselves, one quickly begins to wonder, "What is the point here exactly?" Before long, a NASA land rover appears on the planet and horrifically sucks up our nuclear family through a small tube, mirroring their use of straws to gain their sustenance. The contortions of their bodies as they are stretched and distorted is intended to be comedic, but instead is horrifically painful looking. The small craft makes its way back to the Earth next, where our unsuspecting space family will encounter an inevitable culture clash with the citizens of our humble planet.

A STORY ABOUT AMERICA

It's important to look at things in context. America in the 1950s was an optimistic and exciting place. The post war economy was booming, and the threat of the atomic bomb was a consistent reminder of the threat of war. Throughout that decade, the youth of America were taught of the imminent theat of Communism to our nation. Drills to practice what one would do in the event of nuclear attack were not uncommon, and conformity was the rule of the day. After the events of World War II, our country seemed both united and indebted to a sense of uniformity, with the conformity of suburbia strangely similar to that of the feared and reviled Communist U.S.S.R. in many ways. Rock and roll was a huge influence, as were horror and science fiction movies (which often dealt with giant monsters, often enlarged to dangerous proportions because of the adverse effects of radiation). Another brand of sci-fi classic had aliens from space coming down and zapping everything that we hold dear... killing women and children, and little dogs too. The skull-headed aliens of Topps series of "Mars Attacks" chewing gum cards depicted the mass horrors of war coming to the idyllic American landscape via a despicable alien menace that was indisputably frightening. It was a new kind of horror, the horror of events occurring in foreign lands coming back home, bringing along ghosts of a faraway horrors.
The fear of monsters and space aliens stood in for what was an over-arching fear within Americans of uncertainty and mortality, which was battled with futility by a constant drive toward conformity. Man had conquered life and death, food came from supermarkets rather than hunting trips or laborious farming. You plan for your career, retirement, and even financially plan out death, setting aside money for funeral and deciding where the leftovers go via inheritance. The American family was mapped out in a nice pleasant grid that left little room for error (or individuality for that matter). Not that there wasn't still dissent... even as early as the 1950s, American biker gangs, beatniks, and menacing greasers were synonymous with chaos writ upon the Suburban environment. Street crime and violence, rape and alcoholism, and the horrors of "reefer madness" and jazz music were all there to terrify the average citizen from leaving the comfortable confines of their couch. Television was of course a major part of this, and it was through the "idiot box" and the cinema the American public was first exposed to Rock and Roll music.
From a modern viewpoint, it can be difficult to fully comprehend the effect that this new style of music had on culture... the world of the 1950s was a world that existed before "cool" was something "squares" were "hip to," all of that lingo being strange and alien to the previous generations. Words that are now an ordinary part of our existence, that shape the framework of our very America that we are in today, were feared by the average citizen. Most of all, the rock and roll music was considered by many conservative (caucasian) Americans to be associated with the depravity and low cultural standards of the African American population. With the current era of political correctness dominating discourse, it is easy to forget the significance of racism within American culture at this critical juncture... one can imagine that the fear of the "other" depicted in monster and alien movies reflecting this rather poignantly. Called "black people" by their kindest neighbors, descendants of the African slaves brought over to America survived in ghettos and were legally prohibited from eating in the same establishments as "whites." The tension of two groups of people living side-by-side, but with one group so clearly in a situation advantageous over the other, was an explosive scenario. To those who feared rock and roll music, it was the return of Babylonian and Dionysian revelry to a nation still comforting itself with "classical" music and the hokey Big Band tunes of the previous era. It is hard to believe that something that has become so sterile and ubiquitous was at one point considered a dangerous threat to culture at one point in time, and so it goes. One era's fear is another's salvation... the most conservative opponents of Rock music indeed felt that they were facing the direct influence of Satan himself. However, the drumbeat of rock and roll music was instead ushering in a new era in America, and by the following decade the civil rights movement was in full swing.

"I HAVE A DREAM"

“If you look back, many things that we thought were accidents turned out were not accidents. The entire LSD movement itself was sponsored originally by the CIA, to whom I give great credit. I would not be here today if it had not been for the foresight and prestige of the CIA psychologists, so give the CIA credit for being truly an intelligence agency. ”-Timothy Leary interview February 1978

The social upheaval of the early 1960s was peppered with marches, riots, and assassinations. A prominent supporter of the civil rights movement, President John F. Kennedy, was publicly executed in a ritualistic manner that shocked the entire nation and fostered a distrust for the Government and the 'official story' that continues to this day. In this new era of chaos came a musical phenomenon (from America's former foe Great Britain) in the form of four gently sarcastic young men with identical haircuts called The Beatles. The previous decade, the performer Elvis Presley had been used to sell a safe version of Rock and Roll to the masses, but his oeuvre could hardly be considered subversive. The strangely beautiful and eerily catchy melodies of these four young men caught the attention of the world and formed the soundtrack to a decade of turmoil. For a man named Charles Manson, the Beatles represented the harbingers of the apocalypse, four long-haired youths with "breastplates of fire" (i.e. their electric guitars) who emitted music that was to enact an unusual and rather specific social change. Manson was already incarcerated in the United States Penitentiary at Mcneil Island during the Beatles first visit to the United States, a young man of twenty-nine. Upon his first encounter with their music via the radio, he became deeply fascinated with what he had deemed a fiery and rebellious sound, which inspired him to take up the guitar. The alleged misinterpretation of the Beatles' ideas by Manson (and the ensuing media circus that would accompany the related trial) would prove to be one of the cornerstones of the emerging generation gap going into the next decade.
The invention of LSD is an important day in US History for a variety of reasons, and the 1960s just would not have been the same without it. It is possible that both the Beatles' primary songwriters (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) and Mr. Charles Manson were exposed to LSD at roughly the same time, somewhere in the year 1965. During the time of Manson's initial incarceration, the United States Government (via the C.I.A.) were performing experiments involving the testing the drug on prisoners in locations that included the Vacaville facility where Manson was housed. Lennon and McCartney, for their part, on record have both stated that they were administered LSD against their knowledge by their dentist. They duo had both been invited to the man's house for dinner and were both dosed via their coffee, leading to a traumatic experience that Lennon himself said took over a month to recover from. Upon his release from prison, Manson would go on to use the drug's mind altering properties to show his followers another world of possibility, not unlike the legendary Hashish cult of assassin trainer Hassan-I-Sabbah. Similar to Sabbah, Manson lived on a property in the desert and exposed his associates to a combination of sensory deprivation, rhetoric, and drugs in order to initiate them to his view of life.
By this point, Manson and a group of young people from the San Francisco area were living together on the ranch of an 80-year-old nearly blind man named George Spahn. In exchange for sexual favors from the female members of the Family, Spahn allowed the group to live on the ranch for free. It was Spahn, not Manson, who actually gave the ex-convict's followers many of the colorful nicknames so closely associated with the Family: "Squeaky", "Tex", "Sadie", and so forth. By the time that to group encountered the Paul McCartney composition "Helter Skelter" that would be so closely associated with their actions, Manson's mission was already in full swing. Somewhere across the pond that winter, John Lennon was smoking a spliff and trying to shake a bad, bad feeling.
John himself was not a stranger to bad vibes. Associates of Lennon often recalled his anger, recounting a man who was at times quick to put others down and always insisted on getting the last word. His spontaneity manifested in a multitude of ways, and he was known for violent outbursts such as the beating about of the head and torso of his friend and former bandmate Stu Sutcliffe (the groups bassist before Paul McCartney joined the group)... upon hearing the news of Sutcliffe's death, Lennon burst out in a hysterical laughing fit in front of his bandmates. The death of his good friend Stu (who ended up as part of the collage cover image for the groups famous "Sgt. Pepper" album) was an event that would haunt him throughout the rest of his life, but was by no means the last of his violent outbursts. He told friends in confidence that he believed that he would be murdered because of the karmic response to his violent tendencies. His public connections to transcendental meditation (which he later rejected) and the anti-war and protest movements seem to be efforts to make up for the cynical and angry person that fame had made him.
Lennon often made his lyrics intentionally obscure so as to confuse interpretation, but this willfully obscure style seems to have wrought misinterpretation from the youth culture that was shelling out money for Beatles records. His desire to trick the audience into accepting something beyond their usual moral standards was a calling card throughout Lennon's career as an artist, made famous in the songs "Dr. Robert" and "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds." Despite the fact that the title of the latter song clearly references LSD, Lennon himself put forth that it was simply an innocent songwriting choice based on a child's drawing, although his other bandmates have publically dismissed the innocence of this claim. By the time that their 1968 LP "The Beatles" (aka the White Album), the protest movement in America was in full swing as the youth attempted to have their voices heard by what they perceived as an out-of-touch and out of line government. America was in a silent arms race with Russia that manifested publicly in the competition for dominance in space, culminating in America's highly publicized trip to the Moon. The assassinations of John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, combined with growing disapproval among the youth of the country's war in Vietnam, led to large scale protests and riots that had to be quelled by the police. A commonality between the Beatles live appearances in America as well as Dr. King's marches for freedom is that, in both instances, police felt the need to use high-pressure water hoses on the unruly crowd.

HELTER SKELTER

Into this environment of unrest, the four mop-top rapscallions were the most popular musical group on the planet. Their fan base viewed them as prophets of a new age, and when they released a double-album of sardonic and largely comedic music of an astounding variety (The White Album), an assortment of interpretations developed. Although the sound and delivery is ostensibly cheery in nature, the lyrics and themes, as well as the stark colorless artwork, reflect a bleak and oddly Communistic viewpoint. The opening track "Back In The U.S.S.R." takes Chuck Berry's pro-U.S.A. tune and turns it on its head, making a bizarre appeal to the glory of Russian Communism (complete with Beach Boys-style harmonized vocals praising the women of Russia). Puzzling to say the least, it was an ultra-inflammatory and outright strange opening for the pop group's newest LP. A track by George Harrison titled "Piggies" spoke of bourgeois pigs cannibalizing the less-fortunate. Although presented in a baroque style and performed on harpsichord, it puts nightmarish visions into the minds of young listeners not unlike those of the film "Porcile" by director Pier Paolo Pasolini (another communist). Other songs seem to cynically address world affairs through metaphor, culminating in a leitmotif of revolution on the final side of the album. The first of the revolution-themed tracks, "Revolution No.1," is a mid-tempo blues rock song where the singer openly expresses disdain for followers of Chairman Mao Zedong, which interesting in light of their opinion regarding the supposed glory of the U.S.S.R. The second track with the theme of revolution is the infamous "Revolution 9," an eight minute piece of avant garde tape manipulation that was a major dividing point for both fans and critics of the group. The track features a collage of music and sounds, including the sounds of crying babies, machine gun fire, and protests. Although there are comedic aspects to it, like the rest of the album, the overall feeling given by "Revolution 9" is that of a bleak and un-escapable violence. The weirdly saccahrine easy-listening closing album track "Good Night" comes off like a joke on the listener after the barrage of surrealist discomfort contained in the song preceding it. The obscure and convoluted nature of the collage track has inspired a variety of interpretations. By now everyone has heard of the "Paul Is Dead" urban legend, spread widely by radio disc jockeys during the late phases of Beatlemania. The meaning of the philosophy of revolution espoused by the boys was somewhat hazy. In fact, on the recorded LP version of the song "Revolution" (as opposed to the more up-tempo single version), after stating "If you talk about destruction.../you can count me out," Lennon can be clearly heard stating "In," which is also recorded in the accompanying lyric booklet. Many listeners interpreted this to be a coded endorsement of violent revolution.
Famously, a song from this record would be closely associated with the aforementioned Charles Manson and his friends. The official story of the "Helter Skelter" program consisted of several stages of half-truths and outright misunderstandings, based largely on the testimony of Family member Paul Watkins. These were presented before the court of law and later written as the "official story" by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in his book "Helter Skelter." In the song of that name, McCartney bellows lyrics about the up-and-down nature of the 'Helter Skelter' roller coaster:

"When I get to the bottom/
I go back to the top of the slide/
Where I stop and I turn/
And I go for a ride/
till I get to the bottom/
and I see you again/
Yeah yeah yeah" - Lyrics from Paul McCartney's "Helter Skelter"

According to Bugliosi, Manson read very deeply into this, deciding it was a harbinger for an impending race war which was imminently facing America. Theoretically, a deep-seated racism, probably stemming from his poverty-stricken upbringing, informed Manson's vision of an inevitable battle between the "white" and "black" citizens of the United States. Bugliosi claims Manson went so far as to interpret the title "The White Album" as being further evidence of a racially-derived message contained within the album, despite the fact that the album is actually self-titled. Further aspects of the Bugliosi "Helter Skelter" story owe more to esoteric Nazi philosophy rather than psychedelic pop-rock music. Once the race war commenced, Manson and his "Family" would hide far underground, in tunnels underneath Death Valley that he believed led to an underground world. Here, the Family would use their survival skills to hide out while on the surface level, the white race would be inevitably wiped out by the African-American uprising. Upon the finale of this spectacular urban battle, The Manson Family would emerge from the depths, dramatically rescuing the remaining white children and carrying them back to safety on dune buggies. From their underground lair, Manson and his followers would somehow order around their African conquerors and be treated as kings on the Earth. For his part, McCartney offered that the song does indeed reference the ideas of social upheaval and the changing forces of power, but the post-apocalyptic racial warfare envisioned by Manson in Bugliosi's famous written account seems more in line with a damaged interpretation of the "Planet Of The Apes" series of films rather than any of the "Fab Four"'s notoriously peace-oriented output.
In reality, Manson's unique world-view was already in place by 1968... however, the album seemed to ramp things up and open up some possibilities to Manson for the future. During his murder trial, Manson stated to the court that he believed that the Beatles were subliminally in touch with the revolutionary spiritual current that Charlie and the family were reacting to. Although the Beatles themselves may not have been totally aware, there was an influence just beneath the surface of their music that was of great significance to Charles Manson in particular... The response within him is somewhat akin to that of the programmed killer in Richard Condon's novel "The Manchurian Candidate," when he is instructed to play a game of solitaire. The novel itself is based on information that Condon was privy to regarding Project ARTICHOKE (and other government programs), which attempted to create intricate triggers that would lead an individual to enter into a "kill or be kill" programmed alter in order to carry out dirty tasks without awareness of their own actions**. Manson himself does not exactly fit this profile,
There was certainly much more at hand here than racial tension, simple misinterpretation of lyrics, or government mind control for that matter. The Family (as Manson's community became known) had a shared set of ideals that had little to do with the lyrical content of the Beatles, or racial prejudice for that matter. Much of this lives on the the words and thoughts of former associates Lynette Fromme and Sandra Good, who carry on Charlie's message of A.T.W.A. (alternately Air-Trees-Water-Animals and All The Way Alive) under the names given to them by Charlie, "Red" and "Blue." Fromme and Good's position is quite different from that of other residents of Manson's commune. They believe that all of the activity that occurred at Spahn Ranch was always about sharing a message of drastic action that must be taken for the defense of the environment. In this way, the actions of the individual Family members could be taken as an extreme form of social protest on a certain level from a peculiar position that sits outside of either the left or the right. Manson, Fromme, and Good saw an overly industrialized world before them that consisted of a piercing madness... to them "Helter Skelter" was already upon us.

"MANSON AND ME"

On August 8, 1969 a new attraction opened up in Disneyland, California, called "The Haunted Mansion." It offered the chance for visitors to have the experience of being personally subjected to a cartoonish depiction of paranormal phenomena. The audience enters an artificially aged mansion of vast proportions, which transforms in front of the viewer not unlike the experience of a room unfolding or spinning in one's perception during an acid trip. Walls grow twice their normal height in a concerted effort to make the person experiencing the "ride" feel smaller (just like Charles Dodgeson's 'Alice' after drinking her magic potion). After this, one rides a moving chair through a series of vignettes in the mansion regarding dancing ghosts, spurned lovers, and the unruly deceased... holograms, lasers, smoke, and mirrors are utilized to create the effect. It must have been quite an enthralling experience for those first visitors, unlike anything ever seen before. Later that night, not very far away, another kind of haunting occurred, but in a swank Hollywood mansion on Cielo Drive. Drug dealer and pornographer (aka 'noted hairdresser') Jay Sebring, actress Sharon Tate {and the unborn child of Tate and her husband Roman Polanski}, screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski, the young and able Abigail Folger (heiress to the Folger's coffee fortune), and a young man named Stephen Parent were all murdered by several members of Manson's commune. The murders were particularly grisly, with most of the victims stabbed far beyond the amount of times necessary to kill them. Left behind for the public was a grisly set of nightmare images tailor-made for the press to repeat ad nauseum, including the word "pig" prominently written in the blood of the victims on the front door. Inside the house, bodies were strung up like in a medieval torture room. The methodology of the crimes brings to mind the descriptions of operations in Vietnam that existed under the Phoenix Program. [For those who haven't heard of it, the Phoenix Program was an effort on the part of the US military to create terror in foreign soldiers during the Vietnam War. In order to have a greater impact on those who discovered the bodies, soldiers would leave behind the dead in the most horrific arrangements possible for the purposes of shocking the local population. Recordings of demonic sounds (mocking the local villagers' fear of beings from the afterlife) were played to further this effect as well.] In many ways, the actions of the killers who visited Cielo Drive on August 8th and murdered all who passed their way were a direct recreation of events occurring under official sanction acted out against enemy combatants in Vietnam. For bourgeoisie Americans, when the news of the murders got out, it was as if the Phoenix Programming had been enacted upon them as well.
Manson's group of friends were not adverse to breaking and entering before this incident. Manson had created the term "creepy crawl" for the act of breaking into someone's house and rearranging their furniture (basically in order to freak them out). One famous creepy crawl recipient responded to this somewhat dadaist harassment by making a tombstone with Manson's name on it, with the date of death left blank, which he placed in his front yard next time Manson came around his house. He no longer had any problems from the crew, who were eager to move on to easier prey. For the most part, Manson's invasive living style was driven supposedly by a desire to break past societal structures and mores, but in fact worked as an intense programming tool of its own. By asking his followers to live without possessions (or clocks), without any connection to the outside world, he asked them also to exit the safety of any pretense of safety. The distance from death that is afforded by a suburban bourgeois lifestyle was the enemy... the acts of the Family were in determination with an almost Situationist-like desire to confuse and discomfort the padded, conformist lives of the elite, an attempt to invite those living in ivory towers to experience the terror that was Manson's own existence. The obscurity of the reasoning behind the murders is the cause for Vincent Bugliosi's confused interpretations for the motives behind these crimes. The ideological threshold that Manson and his friends had breached was simply not in any way relatable to the well-to-do prosecutor's outlook on reality. It was a worldview that was not completely dissimilar to the rest of the radical Leftist movements... property was something that they believed distanced human beings from the Earth, and pollution and human inequality were the primary evils facing our existence. Manson's true concept of "Helter Skelter" was more akin to a simple awareness of the chaos of modern Industrialized society: sweatshops, deforestation, slaughterhouses, oil refineries, pollution, toxic waste, and so forth. He believed that humans had become completely disassociated from death with the comforts of modern society, allowing the world to crumble outside of them. The idea of striking out against the elite through these murders was justified for ideological reasons, as these actions were considered a way to bring death into the homes of those that would try to escape it. Manson himself was quite displeased with the initial assault of the Cielo Drive residence, declaring it messy, and tagged along for the next night's events. The next target was a married couple who were seemingly picked at random, a grocery store owner and a lady who ran a dress shop. The duo were dispatched quickly, giving the crew of 'detourners' the opportunity to leave more bloody literature on the walls, this time including such slogans as "Rise," "Death To Pigs," and "Healter Skelter" (that's right, 'Helter Skelter' was spelled incorrectly at the scene of the crime). The idea of framing the murders on the Black Panthers was from the viewpoint of a very simple motive, one explained by Family member Susan Atkins in her personal testimony of the crimes. The idea of monetary stress on the commune provides a rather interesting justification for the ramping up in violence.

According to Atkins, the murders were ultimately the result of a misunderstanding that occurred over the telephone. A man had called up the ranch's phone looking for Family member Charles "Tex" Watson. Since Watson went by the name Tex among his friends, this man calling for "Charles" was instead directed to Manson. Not knowing whom he was talking to, Manson was shocked to hear the voice of an African American person threatening his life on the other end of the phone. Although the misunderstanding was later comprehended, it triggered a fear and paranoia within Manson that fed into a sense of urgency within him. Armed with a handgun, Charles Manson arrived to meet with the gentleman who had called, hoping to alleviate his concerns. Manson found himself in front of an angry man who was upset about being burned on a drug deal (a common source of problems for Manson and his friends). In front of many of the offended party's associates (including a cadre of Black Panthers), Manson shot him several times in the chest and fled the scene with an accomplice. Assuming that he had killed the guy, Manson prepared for immediate reprisal from the Black Panthers, and the attempts to link the murders to the organization were a confused and paranoid effort on the part of Manson to get the heat off of himself.
In fact, the actual home invasions had a lot to do with the fact that Manson owed a lot of people (including members of dangerous biker gangs) a lot of money, and that he was under intense pressure to pay up. Although the idea that they were trying to "freak out the normal people" by committing such horrific murders fits in with the groups apocalyptic ideology, in truth every crime scene associated with the Family was looted of money and valuables, hardly the actions of those participating in a strictly ideological crime. The murders were an act of desperation and fury for a group of people who had been at their boiling point for some time already. Whether or not they were really looking for Agartha, when arrested, the various members of the "Family" were scattered across Death Valley in various tunnels. Members of the group had been arrested (and released) shortly before their final arrests for the theft of a large number of dune buggies, but it was only after the prosecution of Bobby Beausoleil in conjunction with a related murder that investigators accepted the possibility that this strange group of hippies in the desert might have something to do with the Hollywood killings. The Manson Family murder trial would become one of the most publicized events in media since man landed on the moon several years previous, and the story would provide a blueprint for the coverage of future incendiary "trials of the century" to come (O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony, et al).
In the cases of both Charles Manson and the Beatles, essentially both represented different aspects of the Acid mindset coming into the forefront of the American consciousness. The "British Invasion" that the Beatles brought upon America in the early 1960s (not long after the assassination of John F. Kennedy) quickly gave way to a drug revolution that the group was eager to subject their easily influenced young audience to. During the height of "Sgt. Pepper" mania (possibly the Beatles most influential record in terms of cultural impact), the group's music had become identified almost exclusively with the emerging drug culture. The Beatles albums "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Yellow Submarine" (along with the accompanying films associated with those records) take the group away from the mod trappings of their earlier rock and roll, and introduce concepts taken from both Eastern philosophy and the emerging psychedelic movement. It was after a trip to the United States that the group re-emerged with such a different set of standards than before... in fact, during the early part of the 60s, the Beatles spent time in California in the very neighborhoods that Manson and his friends were stalking several years later. The group spent time with the nascent hip culture developing in the California scene at the time, including such luminaries as supposed Druid priestess Tuesday Weld (perhaps the inspiration for the "stupid bloody Tuesday" in the cryptic "I Am The Walrus"). George Harrison owned a residence on Blue Jay Way in Hollywood during the mid-60s, making it likely that the fellows could have partied with many of the luminaries murdered at Cielo Drive. Such a coincidence would not be out of place in the story... Lennon was shot to death years later in front of the Dakota Building in New York, the place where Roman Polanski's Satanic thriller "Rosemary's Baby" was filmed around the time of the Cielo Drive massacre. One wonders exactly what Lennon was going on about when, during a drunken and drug-fueled rage shortly before his death, he began screaming "It's all Roman Polanski's fault!" over and over again in front of his confused and distressed lover May Pang. She had met Polanski several times during social events, and he and Lennon seemed cordial and friendly to one another, with Pang not ever being informed exactly what Polanski was responsible for. To watch Lennon become so unhinged, destroying almost the entire house that the two of them were staying in, and screaming that the prize-winning director was somehow at fault, May Pang could not imagine what John could have been going on about. Lennon's murder in front of the Dakota building would ensure that no one would ever quite know what Lennon was going on about during that particular violent episode.

"Mark David Chapman is in many ways as much the victim of those who wanted to kill John Lennon as Lennon himself." - Fenton Bresler

The Charles Manson murder trial essentially coincides with the breakup of the Beatles... although the two events are not directly connected, several members of the Beatles admitted in interviews that the "Helter Skelter" phenomenon and the association of their music with violent killers gave them each quite a bit of pause. Both events, the Manson trial and the career of the Beatles, represent a proverbial double-barrelled shotgun blast through the facade of safety and "family values" within the American consciousness. The prosecutor's version of the events served the purposes of promoting the ideas of revolution and race war, as well as the dangerous effect of drug culture and rock and roll on the youth. While many young people were getting high and staging protests for the elusive notion of world peace, dramatic headlines (accompanied by photographs of the leering Charles Manson) provided a glimpse into the dark side of the "flower power" counterculture for mainstream Americans. Armed with a personal philosophy of peace and love, as well as a strict adherence to tenets that would later be shared by the Earth First movement, Manson sought to shock the existing culture into understanding the inherent flaws within the bourgeoisie American family structure. The family unit and the suburban infrastructure was enabled and given life by the authority of the United States military victory of World War II, and as American society grew more homogeneous, the counterculture grew more extreme.

"In the course of our inquiry, we uncovered CIA documents describing experiments in sensory deprivation, sleep teaching, ESP, subliminal projection, electronic brain stimulation, and many other methods that might have applications for behavior modification. One project was designed to turn people into programmed assassins who would kill on automatic command." - Martin A. Lee and Bruce Schlain, from the introduction to their book Acid Dreams.

Many misunderstandings abound in relation to Manson and his followers. Although there was a musical group that was called "The Family Jams," it was not the group themselves that dubbed themselves "Family" so much as the press who tied them forever to the moniker of "The Manson Family." In effect, the moniker of "Manson Family" provides a vision for the reader of an "anti" family unit, a nightmare impression of the popular commune lifestyle that was sweeping the nation. A group of dissatisfied runaways teaming up with ex-cons, in a drug and sex-filled mockery of the family unit... this was the worst fear of the conservative mother and father, that fear of all the repression of sexuality and freedom snapping back in their face like a rubber band, stretched to its limit. The willingness to kill, and the view of human life as transient and animalistic was a side project of the LSD that the group was taking. One of the effects that LSD has is a distancing from sentimentality over human life, opening the mind up to the idea of taking the life of another... it was, of course, developed initially as a military tool. In the latter days of the group, shortly before their arrest, Manson took several of the girls out to cut the throats of pigs on the farm, teaching them how to kill. When it was time to commit the acts of home invasion, the lack of any sympathy for the murder victims (represented as pigs) was apparent in the brutality of the crimes. Because of their support of bourgeois values, they were not viewed as human, and instead displaced in the minds of the killers as "piggies." The ideological divide is what allowed for the brutality of the crimes, but Bugliosi did not seem to fathom this completely during the trial. When the group went on trial, the saintly and beautiful Lynette Fromme (aka "Red" or Squeaky) said that they had expected the judgement of a wise man "like Solomon," but instead were faced with a circus where Manson and his friends treated like enemies of the state. Their foolish idealism, combined with a strange murderous outside influence, created a shocking incident that the media and prosecutors attempted to frame in a particular manner, suggesting the reality of an impending race war.

"(The C.I.A. is) a sinkhole of Communism." - Senator Joseph McCarthy

OTHER ATTEMPTS

As complex as the Manson scenario was, it was not the only seemingly planned racially-themed terrorist event going on in California in the late 60s and early 70s. A fellow inmate at Vacaville prison (and likely a fellow recipient of LSD experimentation) named Donald DeFreeze went on to great fame as the leader of the "Symbionese Liberation Front." The name referred not to any country, but some deviated concept of "symbiosis" that Defreeze wished to promote. A militant radical African American with unconventional beliefs regarding the origin of the races, DeFreeze's organization became famous when he kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst and indoctrinated her into his organization (hereafter referred to as the SLA). She was seen on camera during a bank robbery wielding a machine-gun and leering at the camera, but later said that she was subjected to brainwashing techniques using LSD and rape in order to coerce her into participating in the group. This is not unlike what some have said about Manson's group, where sometimes girls would be dosed with LSD and gang-raped in order to intimidate them into falling into line. Susan Atkins claims that Manson's method of mind control was as simple as constant beatings, but it seems that her experience may not have been entirely universal. When the SLA made headlines locally and nationally for their actions, noted San Francisco serial killer "Zodiac" mentioned in a letter to police that the word "SLA" means to kill in the ancient Norse language. The significant aspect of this is the shared use of LSD on unwitting participants in these scenarios. It is easy to forget, but LSD was a brand new substance that was not at the time of its creation considered a recreational drug. It was developed by the United States government as a mind control substance, and any suppliers of LSD from the early days had some manner of direct or second-party connection to individuals involved in the world of intelligence. Systematically creating militant participants of acts of shocking violence is in the jurisdiction of military officials, not street-level hippies. There were many political organizations going around in the 1960s and 1970s, and there were even more "free love" communes of freeloading hippies passing herpes around to each other and smoking dope. There was something different about these headlines-grabbing organizations however, and the media was more than happy to put the official spin on the events on a daily basis. The Zebra murders hit the San Francisco Bay several years after the famous Manson trial, and shifted things around into another perspective, still within a dualistic "black and white" framework. The murders purportedly were the result of militant Black Muslims who were wishing to instigate a race war through a series of brutal murders, not unlike the alleged goal of Charles Manson in the famous "Helter Skelter" version of events. The shoe was on the other foot, but still no dice for the cheerleaders of the "imminent race war" theory.

STEVEN SPIELBERG

Through all of this, Hollywood was there to guide the audience along. Ever since the depression there has been one constant within the film industry: despite all of the turmoil going on in the country, people always kept going to the movies. Going from a time of segregation and strict family units, to a time of higher divorce rates and more children growing up in single parent or foster parent homes, the cinematic family unit adapted and mutated over time. Distrust in the government was more prevalent than before, and citizens grew deeply divided over the Vietnam war during the course of the 1960s in a way that implanted an awareness of horror in all who listened to either side's arguments. The 1960s was also an explosive decade for advancement of technology, and more than any other factor the development of computers began to open up the idea of creating a matrix-like level of virtual reality through technology. The first video game machines, which were simplified "sports simulators" usually involving some rectangles moving back and forth and bouncing a square around ala "Pong," were being designed by pioneers like Nolan Bushnell (who went on to found the Atari company as well as the Chuck E Cheese pizza franchise, both of which were extremely successful businesses that forever changed the suburban landscape). Bushnell was not the only technological pioneer working in the field of video games, in fact one of his early hires at Atari was a young Steve Jobs, who helped engineer the classic Atari 2600 game "Breakout."
Due to the success of Francis Ford Coppola's film "The Godfather" (a veritable cultural phenomena, singly making Paramount Pictures' owners Gulf & Western rise in stock three points upon its release), Hollywood began to take more chances on films that had the controlling hand of the 'auteur' in the 1970s. This opened the door for more personal films to be made with a higher amount of control from the director, and entering into this playing field was a young man named Steven Spielberg. An idealistic chap, Spielberg seemed realistic and determined in his early days, scoring a massive hit with the famous shark drama "Jaws," which became an international sensation. His next film, "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind," was by all accounts an extremely personal film that deeply reflected Spielberg's personal feelings at the time, and at quite a distance from the sort of films that he had been making before. The motion picture essentially depicts the destruction of the family unit and the emerging of an intuitive sort of man of the future, who would leave behind his wife and children in order to travel the stars with small rubbery alien beings. Visually, many aspects of the movie recreate the psychedelic experience much like the "stargate" sequence of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." Flashing colors of all shades emit from impossible machinery, but when seen close-up the alien craft seems to be just that, a transportation ship made out of some metal ore with a bunch of shiny lights. And unlike their cinematic ancestors who attacked tiny scale models of the White House while filmed in black and white, these aliens were here to share some sort of message of peace and love (as well as break up human families... during the course of the film they lead a man to leave behind his wife and children, as well as outright kidnapping the child of a terrified single mother). Another astounding aspect of the film is blatant product placement within it of corporations that were at the time becoming ubiquitous throughout the nation, such as McDonalds, Shell Oil, and many others. It was a time where locally owned stores were, for the first time, being shut down en masse due to competition from these overly prominent multinational conglomerates.
Steven Spielberg's friend, George Lucas, had a huge hit during the same period of time with a film called "Star Wars" (as well as its sequels) depicting a rebel insurrection against an oppressive and one-dimensional evil empire on the part of a multi-species ensemble of humanoid beings and robots. Both directors seemed influenced by the positive messages of the psychedelic movement, the promises of a world dedicated to love were underlying elements to both films in ways that were alien to science fiction films of the previous eras. The promise of space had become a part of the soul's journey, moving on past the trappings of fear and terror represented by the idea of an alien visitation in previous cinematic eras. "Star Wars" in particular was so popular that it spawned the concept of the action film franchise as it exists today, glutting the market with products and tiny plastic artifacts even over thirty years later. "Star Wars" also influenced the video game market heavily, which soon saw an influx of space-oriented shooting games such as "Space Invaders" and "Defender."

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" 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.

"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.
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 sought 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 massacres of American civilians of all time.

"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")

CANNIBALISM

"Senior engineer Steve Calfee reflected that Asteroids appeals to some low, primitive drive in the human mind to clean and take control of the environment. Blasting asteroids into rubble until a once-crowded screen turned into a neat black field appealed to people whose lives were nothing but a field of chaos. For them, Asteroids became a metaphor for life." - Paul Schuytema, Microsoft Arcade, The Official Strategy Guide.

By the 1980s, America had come full circle. Conservative American President (and former movie star) Ronald Reagan promised a return to the days of Mayberry, with a highly publicized "War On Drugs" as a major part of his campaign. From what I understand, we lost that one. Home entertainment entered the stage with VHS providing cinematic pleasures in one's own home for the first time outside of broadcast television. Cable channels were starting to appear, providing uncensored content that would not be able to run on the broadcast networks. Video games were a major sensation in America not just in arcades and gas stations, but also available on home consoles. A new invention called the Walkman enabled people to listen to music cassettes on tiny headphones instead of having to depend on a clunky stereo setup... "boom boxes" had just come on to the scene as well. Lest we forget, these are the primitive ancestors of what can be done now with an ipod, a laptop, the internet, dvd players etc. Entertainment media was first beginning to truly saturate the American home life in ways that it had never before, and the corporations, the providers of content, were struggling to meet the demand. All the sudden, more than ever, Hollywood had become more about the marketing of a product than the product itself. The idea of generating something to sell seemed to be much more important than the overall content within that product, leading to notorious consumer backlash of derivative and widely hated products such as New Coke, "Howard The Duck," and our film of the evening, "Mac And Me." A good example of this marketing overkill is the shelf life of two of the most notorious video games of the console world, the versions of "Pac-Man" and "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" for the Atari 2600.
In 1980, when the "Space Invaders" cartridge was released for the Atari 2600, sales of the system quadrupled simply because of Space Invaders fanatics wishing to play the repetitive shooter at home. Atari had clearly expected the same kind of reaction to a home version of the popular Pac-Man, a Japanese arcade cabinet machine that had taken America by storm. In order to have the game ready for the holiday season, Atari (which had at this point been purchased by Warner Communications) forced programmer Tod Frye to rush the game out in a very short span of time. Long story short, the game had noticeable flaws that caused great disappointment from fans of the coin-operated version, and when word got out sales quickly declined. Atari executives did not learn their lesson, however, and put all their eggs in the basket of acquiring the rights to a video game version of Stephen Spielberg's "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial." Pressed for time to make a profit, Atari commissioned programmer Howard Scott Warshaw to create a game based on the film within the laughable span of two months, something completely unheard of at the time. Based on one of the most popular motion pictures of all time***, "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" was one of the most highly anticipated games for the Atari 2600 system, and one of the system's most publicly reviled disappointments. The concept of a movie-based game was unheard of at the time, with most video game hits being arcade units generally based around shooting space aliens or some sort of puzzle-based franchise (ala Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Q-Bert et al). The game itself is nice to look at, and contains a charming title screen with the friendly ET looking back at you. The plot involves picking up phone parts and Reese's Pieces in order to build a phone that will allow ET to phone home. Simple enough, but the hellish layout results in players falling into hard-to-escape pits almost unavoidably. Players were shocked to find the existential dilemma of being an alien trapped in a trench with no way out as a repeating cycle within the game. The public backlash was swift, and supposedly a large back supply of copies of the game were buried in a landfill not far from a New Mexico atomic weapons testing site. There were many incidents such as this in the 1980s, where large corporations underestimated the public's tastes and attempted to present mindless pablum to the usually accepting masses, only to face total rejection. In his favor, Howard Scott Warshaw himself was a bit of a genius who did the best he could with the deadline presented to him, and his Atari 2600 title "Yar's Revenge" is often cited as one of the best video games of all time. On meeting Spielberg, Warshaw informed him that he felt the director was an outer-space emmissary who was sent here to evoke good will from humanity about alien races, a notion that Spielberg found very amusing. Steven Spielberg's amazing drive and commitment to fantasy film was like a supernova explosion that changed entertainment, and (like Walt Disney and Ray Kroc before him) his accomplishments caused the competition to have to scramble in order to keep up with his pace. Like the emerging video games, the flashing lights and outer-space concepts brought many of the philosophies of the psychedelic generation into the homes of mainstream Americans. In the 1980s-1990s, the media would continue to be dominated by Steven Spielberg and his friends, and of course a multitude of imitators popped up in order to attempt to cash in to the zeitgeist of fantasy/sci-fi family entertainment.

"MAC AND ME," A FILM BY STEWART RAFFILL

"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 "Set Them Free" by the People's Temple Choir

So the NASA lander comes down and sucks up this little alien family into it, and when they get back to Earth these little potato/monkey-looking guys cause all kinds of havoc. If you have any sort of sympathy for the creatures at all, the majority of the film is quite horrific. The family unit in this one consists of two boys (one in a wheelchair) living with a very stressed-out single mother... we are treated to her having an emotional breakdown regarding the immense stress and unwillingness that she has about going in to her new job at SEARS at one point. The appearance of the creatures themselves is an element of the film that causes a constant re-occurring horror- at times you will find yourself watching the screen in disbelief at what you are seeing and hearing. There is an inordinate amount of child actors screaming and yelling, acting much too excited for what is actually occurring in the film. The excessively poor characterization of the film causes the viewer to wonder if they are possibly watching something that is an intentional parody of the sort of "family movie" dreck that was prevalent at the time. The blank, unmoving and dead googley eyes of the aliens look like strange tribal masks. At one point M.A.C. "creepy crawls" the young family, bringing foliage (and a stuffed deer?) into the house, which the mother incomprehensibly initially blames on her wheelchair-bound son (she is under a lot of work related stress). She really flips out on him!
When the family eventually begins to interact with little M.A.C., he has an intense attraction/addiction to Coca-Cola. The alien beings in this film seem to represent some sort of manifestation of what corporations wish humans would become, just unthinking naked consumers. Their "o" shaped mouths are perfectly designed to drink from a straw, and their lack of discernment and good-hearted nature insures a lack of rebellious tendencies. Although chased by the government agents in the film for security reasons, M.A.C. and his family represent ideal humans in some ways from a corporate perspective. There is also a scene where the kids see M.A.C. is almost dying, and they give the little guy vital Coca-Cola so that he can survive. The scene of the creatures whistling to each other across vast distances to the strains of Eno-esque ambient synthesizer music will pull at your proverbial heartstrings. That metaphor ties in with the human person being played like a piano, an apt metaphor for the goals of this sort of consumerist entertainment... watching the film though, it is difficult to determine if these things are being parodied or actually attempted. Nevertheless, the movie does actually begin to work on a variety of levels once one gets into the rhythm of things. Once you are watching the little boy drive his wheelchair alongside his jogging mom to the strains of sappy 80s easy listening spliced in with a madcap scene of M.A.C. escaping neighborhood dogs by climbing up a tree (to the same soundtrack), the variety of opposing emotions evoked at once is enough to cause one's head to spin.
The greatest part of the movie, its "stargate entrance" or "death star assault" scene if you will, is perhaps the most maligned scene of the picture. The dada-like cornerstone of the film is an extended birthday party that occurs at a McDonalds. The little boy in the wheelchair has a next door neighbor that he hangs out with a lot, a little girl that likes to dress up like a Native American. There is a particularly laughable effect at one point where the boy's chair goes over a cliff, and the camera edit quickly shifts to the image of what is clearly a limp dummy in a wheelchair being pushed off of a cliff... M.A.C. saves the boy's life of course. Ok, so anyway, the little girl has a really cool older sister who works at McDonald's, who is often wearing her uniform during the movie. The suspense is deadly, the whole time you are watching, you are thinking "When are we going to actually see McDonalds?"
The payoff is definitely worth the wait, however. The scene in "Mac And Me" that happens inside McDonalds is perhaps one of the most rewarding scenes that has ever occurred in a motion picture, which you will want to relive over and over again. In order to sneak him into a friends birthday party, the young boy puts MAC inside a teddy bear skin (which is oddly the size of a small child or possibly a very small adult actor). Although hidden under a teddy bear suit, the unnatural nature of MAC's appearance is quite disturbing. The discomfort is alleviated by the simple explanation that he is some sort of robot bear, which the adults and other bystanders inexplicably accept.
Once we are finally at McDonalds, it is really worth the wait. A team of synchronized multi-ethnic breakdancers is cutting loose outside the restaurant to the hip hop sounds coming out of a large boombox. Kids are joining in on the fun and dancing along. Inside the building, Ronald McDonald (credited in the films credits as being played by "Himself") is there to entertain the children. Mid-tempo pop music starts to play over the intercom and everyone starts dancing and doing backflips and other synchronized moves. Even Ronald McDonald himself gets in on it, and by the time government agents show up they are unable to get through the kickline of Football men who are joining in on the fun. You will see sweaters and shorts during this sequence that have not seen the light of day since probably 1995 at the absolute latest. It is a serious time capsule moment that will make you happy that you sat through the previous hour of setup for the amazing visit to McDonalds. My main complaint of the film would be that it is filled with time-consuming chase sequences, but then again this is essentially just another factor aped directly from "ET."
A scene in a grocery store is a rather poignant incident that exemplifies the message that the film attempts to get across... the alien family walks into a grocery store naked, greatly alarming the customers and employees within. The awkward gait and nudity is shocking to the sensibilities of the common people, and soon the police are called. A misunderstanding between M.A.C.'s father and a police man ends with the liver-spotted patriarch welding a firearm and causing a massive confrontation with local law enforcement. In an extremely manipulative and unlikely turn of events, police somehow cause an explosion that actually kills the main character, the little boy in the wheelchair. Like Jesus Christ (and "Starman") before him, M.A.C. actually raises the boy from the dead in front of the amazed onlookers (can't do anything about your legs though, I guess, sorry 'bout that). The movie ends with the aliens finally clothed (whew) and becoming naturalized citizens of the United States. As they drive onto the freeway, a word bubble actually appears on the screen from their car saying "We'll Be Back." If only we could be so lucky.

{Illustrations by Vanessa Totenblom}

* As with E.T., M.A.C.'s name is of course an acronym, this time for "Mysterious Alien Creature."

** See the Mark David Chapman, Sirhan Sirhan, the guy who shot all the people in that theatre in Colorado, etc... A sudden violent act supposedly committed for some alleged and malleable motive, and then once you see the guy in court, boom, no memory of what happened or why, no emotion, just a lost shell with camera flashbulbs going off in their face... Like clockwork.

*** 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 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 occurrences 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 lullaby-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 heavy 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.

{{{Fifty Capsule Movie Reviews}}}

"Go into the light." - dialogue from Poltergeist

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 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 and 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). One cool thing about this movie is that the director and almost the entire crew are all women, a rare situation in the major studio pictures such as this one. 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 guignol 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. LHODES 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 authentic 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. 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 Railsback from inside 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 her astronaut lover back to Earth, which basically results in a psychic invasion of nymphomaniacal interdimensional vampires that multiply and reproduce across the planet like a cancer. Railsback, a true romantic, leaves his home planet behind the the pursuit of intergalactic love while Earth is overrun. 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 blurry 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 this 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, that will have you thinking long after the credits are done rolling, largely due to a 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, seemingly inspired by the Addams Family. 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. Guests arrive, which leads to a culture shock between the freaks and the norms, and there are some knifings and so forth. The actress who plays the titular "Spider Baby" is captivating in her role as a deranged, overgrown child with a penchant for murder. She apparently had an intense relationship with Marlon Brando until her early demise. A 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 giallo, 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 can 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. 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... 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-oriented fare (such as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Breakfast Club"). At the time of this particular film, both leading men were at an early stage of their career and ready to be leading men. 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, with 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 FLESH EATERS - 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 a weak attempt to convince the audience that it was in fact a sequel to Romero's completely unrelated film. 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. You haven't lived until you have seen a zombie chase after a half-naked woman underwater, only to have to battle it out to the death with 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 gorefest. Great score and theme by Fabio Frizzi also, this is one of Lucio Fulci's most solid and consistent films. Stars Tisa Farrow, sister of "Rosemary's Baby" star Mia.

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 things, 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. Fulci at this point in his career was embracing chaos for the creation of a kind of "ultimate film," horror and some sort of comedy, the sadness of the world, the excitement of facing death all at once. 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, a role he was closely associated with in life. This film seems a little bit like a much lower eschelon version of a Hammer Picture. 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 III: 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), NOESP3:TDM 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 III: SEASON OF THE WITCH - 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. This one 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 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. Director Tommy Lee Wallace went on to direct the TV version of Stephen King's "It."

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 gets 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 look forward to understanding it one day. Apparently Argento faced a lot of meddling from the major studio Fox who were involved with the picture, and was not used to such interference from the studio as it the norm in Hollywood. A weird but beautiful movie.

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 dream/hallucination sequences. Overall the feeling 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 did a pretty good job here. In order to present her as a blank slate in regards to high-school dynamics, Lindsay Lohan's character has the pretense of being raised in the African jungle. 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 humorous script from Fey.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1972) - The first time I ever watched this movie it was at a house party when I was a teenager. The party-goers 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 suppose. 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 successful 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 memorable 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, which got me a little curious about the series. 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. In "Day 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 directed toward the main protagonist. In Fulci's movies, men are often presented at their very worst, and women at their most tragic states. The incomparable Jennifer O' Neill (Scanners) 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, Tenebre at times 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 is always the best. 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 seven or eight 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.

HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN - Rowdy Roddy Piper, Sandahl Bergman (from Conan The Barbarian), and Cec Verrel star in this picture (which led to Piper's starring role in John Carpenter's "They Live"). After a nuclear war, the Earth is barren and infertile, and so are many of its inhabitants. A "provisional government" is in place that is dominated by a female-run and operated branch called Med-Tech. It's Med-Tech's job to find fertile males with which to re-populate the Earth, and rapist Sam Hell (played by Piper) impregnates the daughter of a prominent military official, quickly making him a vital asset to Med-Tech. Due to the rarity of fertile males, Piper (playing the titular character Sam Hell) must save the human harem of a mutant frog man with three amphibian/reptoid phalluses and impregnate them, for the greater glory of the state. Running a slim and precise 88 minutes, I found this film to have an interesting racial undercurrent that is not often commented on by critics. Piper's performance as Sam Hell is actually quite charismatic and in fact far superior to his more "stoic" heroism on display in the more popular Carpenter venture. After watching this movie, I was astounded at how such an awesome movie was made with such a low budget, and was actually astounded to discover that the thing actually cost over a million dollars to make, a great deal of money in 1987. Sandhal Bergman is rather versatile in this one, and her much-humiliated character comes off with dignity thanks to her brave performance. Cec Verrel is a goddess as Med-Tech strongarm Centinella, looking like a cross between a supermodel and a hard-ass but constantly amused desert commander. When she smiles, the screen lights up, and my heart fills with joy. Worth a look for her performance alone.

TOONCES THE CAT AND FRIENDS - This is not actually a movie, but in fact a television pilot written and produced by Saturday Night Live writer Jack Handey. Like many others, at the time of Handey's prominence as an SNL writer, I assumed that he was some sort of an alias for a more well-known person like Al Franken or Steve Martin. This was largely due to two factors, namely that most of the non-performing SNL writer's names are never heard or seen on the show, and that Handey's name sounded like either a squeaky-clean or possibly very dirty joke. Nevertheless, he is a real person who continues to sell multiple volumes of his "Deep Thoughts" series of books, and at one point in time made this one-off "Toonces The Cat And Friends" pilot episode. This was pretty funny, but ultimately I was disappointed that this was not strictly a compendium of Toonces-related skits. For the unfamiliar, "Toonces, The Cat Who Could Drive A Car" was a re-occuring skit involving a cat named Toonces who would drives a car off a cliff, which was represented throughout multiple skits with the same stock footage of a car crash. Steve Martin starred in the first appearance of Toonces as his male owner, to be replaced by Dana Carvey from that point on. The skits interpolate a live cat actor with a cat puppet for the more dangerous stunts in the production of the (pre-taped) Toonces segments. Unfortunately, Toonces appears on a minority of the time taken up on this tape, and instead we get some strange and unpleasant skits from Handey involving black humor surrounding a little league baseball coach (played by Randy Quaid), and space aliens who inadvertantly kill Earth children by opening or closing the door to their space ship too fast, among other subjects. I was pleasantly surprised to spot an appearance by Bob Odenkirk (of the brilliant, amazing Mr. Show) in a skit, but for the most part the lack of Toonces is the most apparent aspect of this VHS release. Would be interested in seeing a box set compendium of Handey's contributions to SNL ("Deep Thoughts," "My Big Thick Novel," "Fuzzy Memories," "Toonces," "Tales Of Fraud and Malfeasance in Railroad Hiring Practices," and more... there must be hours of great Handey SNL material out there).

BABY MAMA - Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have such an amazing chemistry in this film that it makes up for a completely inane premise and setup. Despite the fact that this is ostensibly a film about surrogate childbirth, it is more an ode to fertility and female partnership. Poehler and Fey portray an "odd couple" who are thrown together as two strong women finding an important place in a crumbling male-dominated world. The family structure is throughouly torn apart and lampooned throughout the script, leading to an overall message leaning toward the concept of "it takes a village to raise a child." The banter and physical comedy between these two masters of American comedy makes for an entertaining ride, with compentent supporting performances from the male actors involved in the picture. Look for Steve Martin in a biting send-up of a corporate CEO of a Whole Foods-like organization who is deeply in touch with his inner potential. Amy Poehler is a hyperactive screen presence who dominates the frame with her charm. Definitely one of the best ever "Saturday Night Live" related films, superior to the many single-skit themed productions that flooded the market in the 1990s. I am an unapologetic fan of both Fey and Poehler, who are some of the most important people in the comedy world at the moment. It's a shame that so many interviewers focus simply on these two performers' political impersonations rather than the amazingly versatile improvisation abilities that they both possess. Both Fey and Poehler seem to be able to write their material as easily as breathing, the mark of a hard-working and extremly studied intuitive performer. Hopefully there is more to come film-wise from these two as a duo. I enjoyed this one! Amy Poehler is great.

HOUNDDOG - This stylized portrayal of youth from director Deborah Kampfmeier was promoted to America unfortunately as the "Dakota Fanning rape movie," but, as Fanning herself said, "It's called acting." A decidedly adult film discussing some very true aspects of youthful sexuality from a feminine standpoint, Fanning's character is a girl who is discovering her independence and youthful sexual energy at a pivotal point in development, which is exploited by the others surrounding her. In the end, however, she discovers power and independence within herself, and her own ability to harness that power. Kampfmeier does a fantastic job with this picture, and the surrealist touches and deeply personal atmosphere make me curious to see her debut feature "Virgin." The director is currently listed as working on a project with a working title of "Lonely Hunter," possibly (hopefully) an adaptation of the amazing existential Americana novel "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers. Dakota Fanning is one of the best actresses working in Hollywood today. Her and sister Elle Fanning are like two brilliant feminine faerie homunculi sent to educate the rest of the human race about our maximum potential.

CATWOMAN - This one gets a lot of hate out there in the world, but ask yourself this: how many truly horrible movies (starring men) stack up sequel after sequel, raking in the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue ("Fast And Furious" for example) while being promoted as great mindless popcorn entertainment, compared to the volume of harsh criticism delivered against this movie? Halle Berry and Sharon Stone deliver a brutal cat-fight finale that is veritably a special effect onto itself. Also, the whole Catwoman character is completely removed from the Batman universe and rogue's gallery etc- the film attempts to create a completely unique Cat-paragdigm based more on Egyptian Goddess imagery and a strong anti-cosmetic industry viewpoint. If you have any desire whatsoever to watch Halle Berry senselessly whip people while wearing an S+M catsuit in an attempt to take down an evil cosmetics corporation (or scenes of CGI cats emoting) this movie will appeal to your sharpened sensibilities.

SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY - This is a widely acclaimed "documentary" made by Todd Haynes and starring Barbie (tm) dolls. It purports to tell the story of the years leading up to the death of singer Karen Carpenter. The film exploits not only the music of the Carpenters themselves, but also the nature of Karen's death and the surrounding ills of anorexia and bulimia. This is an extremely unpleasant short film that ultimately seems like it would be triggering for women suffering from those two particular disorders. The tone of sarcasm and cynicism has an ironic weight that has influenced many things to come, such as Robot Chicken and the Family Guy. The fact that actual people are represented ironically through unmoving mannequins is disturbing enough, but inferences and assumptions are placed into the story unneccessarily as if they were fact. After essentially exploiting the entirety of the early Carpenters catalog for dramatic effect, it unsympathetically depicts a stylized first person view of Karen's death and the reactions to her troubles proceeding it from family members. A cynical and ultimately exploitational bit of clever editing that packs a punch, albeit pulling some rather cheap and accusatory strings. Still, the project shows an impressive level of production value and awareness of the power of subliminal storytelling. Horrifying, repulsive, and in fact illegal.

CONEHEADS, THE MOVIE: PART TWO - For this one, we will have to update this for all of the new people. Of course Ashton Kutcher will be the dad Mr. Conehead, and maybe Demi Moore can make her come back as his wife, the lady cone head. Either Miley Cyrus or maybe Jessica Alba would be the daughter cone head, and the original actors will all play supporting roles. In preparation for the film, Kutcher will have to study the original film and live as a cone head for weeks at a time even through the script writing stages. It is a difficult process, and although the final process was done with CGI the harness and helmet that had to be worn by the actors was still excruciating. So in part two, the Coneheads have to go back to their planet for an emergency meeting of all cone headed people. It will open in space and we will not see Earth at all in the film except for a view of the planet at the beginning. The cone heads planet is struck with some alien disease where many of the cone people are wiped out. We follow our cone head family and see from their perspective that for all they know they could be the last cone heads left on their planet. Things are bleak and grim for the cone race, it looks like almost total extinction for cone heads. They flee the planet in their spaceship and go through a series of planets where different things are happening. On these planets there will be guest appearances by some people who were involved in the original era of the cone heads appearances on SNL. Our cone head family end up on a planet where Garrett Morris lives as a king over a multitude of tiny CGI-created green people. He explains that is where he moved to after his appearance in "The Stuff" (Morris plays himself). Candace Bergen makes an appearance as a Barbarella-like woman living on a planet run by women. In a final battle between the womens planet and evil alien guys that all look the same, many battle of the sexes type of jokes are bandied about. In the end, the Cone Heads help all of the people to create peace with their draconian pragmatism, appeasing the masses with the suffering of the few. Also, guest appearances by Halle Berry as a woman military commander, and Christopher Walken as the evil bad guy. Christopher Walken will be the leader of some really evil guys who tried to wipe out the coneheads, and then at the end it turns out that right after the coneheads left their planet a cure was invented, but many of the cones had evacuated to planets all across the universe. Whenever cone headed people planetarily are near each other from now on their cones will vibrate and light up, a signal of solidarity to all coneheads.

BARBIE ROCKERS - "Barbie Rockers" is a half-hour long program made by Mattel in order to promote a series of futuristic rock-and-roll oriented Barbie characters. Her and her friends have giant teased hair and perform glam-influenced new wave rock music oriented toward a message of feeling good and looking pretty. Although I have seen other Barbie-related entertainment before, usually the production value and level of creativity is quite low, whereas this film is not only exceptionally well made but also rather imaginative in its dramatic recreation of the Barbie ideal. Barbie and her friends perform a sold out world tour of their sugary brand of pop, causing a global emergence of world peace. As proposterous as this sounds, when watching this video it becomes palpable that this lone rock group could somehow unify the planet. They get a case of the post-tour blahs, and so Barbie tells the gang to cheer up and dance, because there is always more stuff to do. After this they get a phone call and are invited to play the first ever concert in outer space. The space station that they are booked to play at is shaped like a giant pink flower. Also, Ken wears a pink scarf, and has a close male friend who is also in the band with them. Needless to say, the gals and guys bring their rocking prowess to the outer limits of space and potentially bring peace to the entire universe. Available on VHS from Hi-Tops Video, Highly Recommended!

GUINEA PIG PART TWO: FLOWERS OF BROKEN FLESH - Charlie Sheen saw this movie at a party and reported it to the United States government, thinking that he was somehow witness to a criminal snuff film production. What American authorities discovered instead was a semi-realistic, mostly aestheticized dramatization of an ancient Japanese story of a demon who possesses a man and influences him to dismember beautiful women. The dismemberment is depicted in excruciating detail, with a comically enthused samurai-looking gentleman spouting deranged poetry throughout the proceedings. The rubbery detachment of the limbs should have been an alert to Mr. Sheen of the fictional nature of the proceedings, but presumably he was not too familiar with gore cinema at the time. Actually, this film is the live-action directorial product of a brilliant Japanese cartoonist whose work has not quite made it to the American mainstream (outside of the infamy shared by his contributions to this legendary series of faux-snuff motion pictures). It is a shame that this is known more as a supposed "snuff" film rather than as a weird bit of cultural satire from an extremely imaginative and under-appreciated (in the US at least) Japanese artist and director. He has made a series of films in the nineties with a surreal horror feel similar to some of the more manic work of Takashi Miike. Very intense filmmaking interwoven with (extremely dark) humor and a small bit of history. Definitely necessary viewing for fans of extreme gore, far superior to the bland first volume of this series.

AIRPLANE 1975 - Before actually seeing this movie, I had seen it parodied many times. It always creates a strange viewing experience when your first exposure to the concepts that it presents is through parody. I imagine that there is a generation now who have had this experience with "The Exorcist" and now possibly the "Star Wars" series of films. From the same era as those classics though, came this rather overblown airport thriller that uses an old-timey thrill ride format to promote heavy drinking and sexual promiscuity. Excellent turns from Karen Black as the fabled stewardess who must fly a plane after the pilot is blinded, as well as Gloria Swanson (who plays herself!) in an interesting appearance. The sleazy 1970s vibe of this one makes it a lot of fun, and be sure to look for Charlton Heston at the beginning and end of the thing as the brave guy who is airlifted onto the plane to land it to safety. I don't say this often, but this one is a genuine piece of Hollywood Crap.

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (REMAKE) - I am absolutely not a fan of the whole remake thing that is happening- I usually refuse to watch this sort of thing. Although I really like the depressive, grainy sleaze feel of the original "I Spit On Your Grave," to be perfectly honest, it is a severely flawed film and, frankly, Meir Zeirachi is not that great of a storyteller. If you don't know already, the plot of this one is about a girl who moves out to a little house in the middle of nowhere to get some peace and quiet. Local weirdos start paying attention to her and want to make themselves a part of her life. After a series of miscommunications and tense moments, the fellows inevitably get all riled up to commit a really long rape sequence. In the original film, the rape sequence seems to take up about 1/3 of the entire film. You wonder, is this ever going to stop? Are they just going to rape this poor girl (Camille Keaton, descendant of long ago funnyman and overall genius Buster Keaton) for the entire duration of the film? But no, then in the original she takes a relaxing shower and then seduces and kills all the dirty rapers one by one. In this remake, the story is set in rural swamp country in Louisiana, and the rapers are a bit more realistic than the weird caricatures depicted in the original. Overall, the entire production is much more gritty and palpable, but something is lost still in the modern, digitized look versus the purity of the grainy old film reel. Still, the story changes that were made to this make the whole thing far more realistic than the original, making this something like a cross between the original and a modern noir Americana realism film like "Winter's Bone." I hate remakes, but I was curious about the Louisiana setting, and it really wasn't badly made at all. Some really nice cinematography. Should have a different title and be it's own standalone film- I think more people would appreciate it if it wasn't supposed to replace a beloved classic. I still like the grittiness of the first one more than this.

BLUE VELVET - Let's see them try and remake this one. David Lynch showed the world what he was really thinking about with this grim and humorous look at the mysteries of sexuality. College student Jeffery Beaumont (Kyle Machlachlan of Twin Peaks, Dune, etc) becomes obsessed with the enigmas surrounding a severed human ear that he discovers in a vacant lot. In the meantime, he explores the thin line between voyeuristic perversion and legitimate detective work. An extremely stylized view on violence, sexual obsession and power, love, attachment, and our place in the world. Lynch combines techniques from horror, comedy, classic noir, and art film genres into a unique visual palatte that is as unique as his paintings. The characters come to life with an oozing emotional resonance, constantly torn between the dark and light aspects of themselves. Ultimately this tells the story of the duality of man in a style of visual poetry designed to resonate with the American audience, bringing 1950s suburban values crashing together with the upheaval and realizations of the modern urban experience. A landmark film that echoes throughout all of Lynch's feature film work ever since, with extremely high production value for such a fiercely independant-minded feature (thanks to Lynch's friend Dino De Laurientiis, a Hollywood giant who very recently passed on). Great score from Angelo Badalamenti as well.

PONYO - Saw this in the theater a few times with my wife (one time was with a friend of ours and her young son), she is a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki's work. Not as adult-themed as some of his more recent film work, this one is definitely a return to the carefree innocence of "My Neighbor Totoro," but seems to be aimed at an even younger audience. This movie tells the classic Danish story of the "Little Mermaid," but instead of being a tale of a girl of courting age turning into sea foam, Miyazaki weaves the story into a more gentle tale of a love based around friendship. The ending didn't really make a heck of a lot of sense. Better to listen to this one in Japanese (subtitles are available) without the Americanized voice dubbing- it has unfortunately been rogered a bit in order to push an environmental agenda not intended in the original script. Excellent movie for children with lots for adults to enjoy, and the depiction of the family unit was very positive and unconventional. Nice.

ROBOCOP - Nice satire on dystopian logic and the military-industrial police state. With the kind of robotic drones and unmanned technology that is being utilized abroad these days by the US military, "Robocop" is way ahead of its time in suggesting a concientious collaboration between the law, technology, and human sensitivity. Heavily influenced by the vigilantism of Batman and the Charles Bronson archetype, Paul Verhoven weaves a bleak comic tale of the future that was as over-the-top with gore for its time as it was socio-economically sound. The main thrust of the film is to depict a world not unlike our own, where the mafia and the rich conspire to control technology and the police force for their own purposes against the masses. Robocop is programmed to protect his corrupt bosses, but against his programming turns them in to the authorities, and in the end he regains a bit of his humanity while serving the greater good. Although generally viewed as a very dark satire mixed with violent action, it is the heart and well-thought out economy of the world around those events that makes this a compelling and powerful film. Robocop himself as a character represents the fusion of law and "the system" with individuals who choose to serve a greater good (such as law enforcement and military). He observes and protects for the sake of all law-abiding citizens, and suffers greatly in the process. Although the film is stylized and often over-the-top, it ultimately serves to put the viewer into a sympathetic mindset of those who dedicate their lives to service. A few actors from "Twin Peaks" are in this, including an eerie turn from Ray Wise (aka "Leland Palmer") as a maniacal henchman who hangs out at techno dance clubs. Unlike "The Terminator," when Robocop visits a techno dance club, he manages to apprehend his man without opening fire in the crowded space, allowing the grateful patrons at the club to continue dancing the night away. Excellent "popcorn" movie.

DEADTIME STORIES - Watching this made me really aware of subliminal intentions within filmmakers. It is difficult to ascertain whether the pedophilic implications of the wraparound sequence are intentionally placed to trigger a disturbing reaction from the audience, or simply the reflection of a disturbed mind erroneously trying to depict naivete. This late 80s horror movie has several sequences that are based around fairy tales, as well as a wraparound sequence of an Uncle Mike talking to a kind of annoying kid who demands a bedtime story. There are some really cool special effects in the first sequence, a parson having his hand turned into a Hand Of Glory and a dead person forming back to life from a bunch of squirming slime and ropes. Nice! Second story is kind of silly, but the sheer beauty and grace of the actress who plays Red Riding Hood makes up for this asinine plot and soundtrack stuff that happens in this section of the movie. Finally, a Troma-esque satirical romp through American family values happens at the end of the film, and despite some really goofy comedy, the depiction of Goldilocks as an insane girl who lives in a house full of rotting corpses that she talks to is pretty ill. Overall, this is some really bargain bin 1980s horror with rubber monsters and the like, and if you can deal with that then you will be in for a few yuks here. Worth it for the rare focal appearances of some very cool actresses.

THE HAUNTING - Classic Robert Wise triller set in a haunted mansion where paranormal investigators and a skeptic (played by Russ Tablyn, Twin Peaks' Dr. Jacoby) get freaked out by possible happenings at night, in the dark. Freaks out viewers in a more sincere way than many modern scare-hungry ghost tales. A mysterious and influential movie, especially on Kubrick's "The Shining" and many others yet to come. Based on the classic story "The Haunting At Hill House," which has been remade several times. The original is still the best however. Not to be confused with the non-supernatural extortion chiller "The House On Haunted Hill," a movie which exploits a famous title in a way that makes little to know sense. The Robert Wise picture is the one to see. Check your local library.

IRREVERSIBLE - I remember seeing this in the theater during it's one-weekend run at the Canal Place in New Orleans. A one hour and thirty minute film, the whole thing is the story of a young couple who find that they are expecting a child. They go to a party and the man acts like a total dick, running around on ecstacy and hitting on a bunch of girls in front of his preganant lady. She gets pissed off and runs out on him, taking the local crimson-walled subway. Unfortunately, before she makes it there, a really weird guy rapes her at knifepoint for about eight minutes and brutalizes her face and body in an excessively violent manner (during this time, an observer walks in the background briefly, to pause and quickly turn and walk away from the scene). Her fella and his friend found out and see her all fucked up on a hospital gurney (mind you this is all in French this whole time) and her fella gets really pissed off. He starts going around beating up random people and yelling and stuff like that. Eventually for some reason they end up at a nightmarish gay sex club and a guy who may or may not be the rape guy's friend (or the rape guy, but probably not) gets his head violently smashed in with a fire extinguisher for all their trouble. This is all told backwards and was created with a script that was only a few pages long, with most of the events improvised by the actors (including real-life couple Vincent Cassel and Monica Belucci {meow!!!}). It is not the story that is the hammer, but the telling, and this one comes down like a ton of bricks. Beautiful filmmaking from a gifted artist. Irresponsible? Maybe. The film equivelent of the music of Whitehouse and the writing of Peter Sotos. Low frequency sounds, evil editing, and heavy fonts are used to disorient and upset the viewing audience. It works!

"Don't go into the light!" - dialogue from Poltergeist.

All written content by Joseph Gates: harshhumanignorance@gmail.com