Showing posts with label Thoroughly Modern Chtulu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thoroughly Modern Chtulu. Show all posts

Saturday, June 10, 2023

Welcome To Your Crude Societal Metaphor Weekend

Imagine This

Q Believers Featured On 'Nightline'; August 2018
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Let me tell you a story. It won't be short -- but it's a good story, and it has a point. You may even Get It before the end. 
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In 1994, director John Carpenter released In The Mouth Of Madness, his take on one of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories. Carpenter's career includes films like Carrie, Starman, "Big Trouble In Little China", They Live, "Assault On Precinct 13"; Escape from New York and "-- From L.A.".

Madness was the final film in Carpenter's 'Apocalypse Trilogy' -- The Thing (1982), "Prince Of Darkness" (1987 -- whose posters should state: "This film will not just frighten you; it will fuck you up for life"), and ended with In The Mouth of Madness

Its script was written by Michael DeLuca (Fright Night; Moneyball; Captain Phillips), and its cinematography by Gary B. Kibbe (Robocop 3; Village of the Damned; Escape From L.A.). 

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 58% rating. In the years since its release, Madness has achieved cult status.
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It's worth an aside to note that in the same year Mouth of Madness was released -- 1994 -- a new cable network began broadcasting in the United States. It used the twelve-year-old, Ted Turner / CNN news-as-entertainment model, and also offered coverage of sports, even a new 'cartoon for adults' program on Sunday evenings.

It was the brainchild of an Australian media boss who aggressively ran tabloid newspapers on three continents. He claimed the network would be "fair and balanced" in its presentation of news (a swipe at the "liberal bias" of the other networks), and it would be known as Fox News.
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John Trent (Sam Neill) is being transferred into a huge mental asylum outside New York City. He's admitted by a Dr. Sapperstein (John Glover) and struggles with a pair of attendants, shouting "I'm not insane!!"  In the background, a radio report of "an epidemic of violent psychotic behavior spreading across the country and indeed the world".


Trent is placed in a padded cell, still wearing a straitjacket, still shouting that he is Sane. As other residents of the ward shout back ("Yeah! I'm not crazy either!"), music begins to play on the PA system: The Carpenters' We've Only Just Begun.


Later the same day, a Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) appears to interview Trent, and may work for the government (Sapperstein says nervously, "It must be getting serious out there, if they're sending you guys in").  Did Trent ask for anything? Wrenn says. Yes -- only a single, black crayon.


Wrenn finds Trent has decorated his cell with thousands of crosses -- drawn on the walls, floor, his institutional jumper, and himself, with the crayon. Telling Trent he "wants to help", Wrenn sits down to listen as Trent begins to tell his story.
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Trent is a Phillip Marlowe style, freelance insurance investigator in New York City -- cynical, watchful; always suspicious. After exposing the victim of a warehouse fire as an arsonist looking for a payout, he lunches with the insurance attorney -- who makes a pitch to assist with another client, a publishing company.


Trent accepts -- just as a bald man with an axe (Conrad Bergschmeider) smashes through a restaurant window and stands over him. "Do you read Sutter Cane?" he asks; looking up at the man's face, Trent can see he has two irises in each eye. The man raises the axe; police appear and shoot him down.

Trent meets the publisher, Jason Harglow (Charlton Heston). His company's multi-mega-hit horror writer, Sutter Cane, has disappeared, and blown a deadline to produce his seventh, final book in a series. No one knows where he is. Near-riots have occurred at bookstores across the country over the delay in publication.

Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) joins the meeting. His six previous books had sold nearly a billion copies, been translated into eighteen languages. Harglow wants Trent to find Cane and bring the manuscript back; Trent agrees.


Styles tells him there's something different about Cane's writing -- it's "been known to have an effect on less stable readers... disorientation, memory loss, a paranoid reaction... 

A year ago, Styles says, Cane's work became erratic -- "More bent, more bizarre than usual. He became convinced his work was real, not fiction."  Trent chuckles; This shit really sells? "Are you surprised?"

Trent responds, "Lady, nothing surprises me. We fucked up the air, the water; we fucked up each other -- why don't we finish the job by flushing our brains down the toilet?"

So where is Cane? The manuscript? "I don't know. His agent was the last person to see it."  Then let's talk to the agent, Trent says. "You already met him," Styles replies. "He attacked you with an axe."
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Styles convinces Trent to actually read Cane's novels. At a bookstore, Trent sees a man staring at him, whose face seems -- bruised; he's wearing plastic-framed glasses repaired with adhesive tape. "Do you read Sutter Cane?" the man asks Trent, then says, "He sees you."

At home, Trent reads the novels, while a TV commentator asks: "Horror writer Sutter Cane: A harmless pop phenomenon? Or a mad prophet of the printed page?

"... Police believe recent riots started because stores could not meet the demand for advance orders of Sutter Cane's latest novel, 'In The Mouth Of Madness'. When does fiction become religion?"

Trent dozes, dreaming he's walking home, posters advertising Sutter Cane horror novels on nearby walls. He sees a cop in an alley, viciously beating a kid who had been tagging a wall. The cop sees Trent and barks, "You want some too, buddy?"
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Trent realizes each Cane novel has a shape, outlined in red over the cover art. Clipped into puzzle-pieces, they form the shape of New Hampshire -- where Hobb's End, fictitious setting of Cane's novels, is located. 

Hobb's End isn't shown on any map of the Live Free Or Die state -- but Trent convinces Harglow and Styles that it may be real, "another vanished town in America". Harglow agrees to allow Trent, and Styles, to travel to New Hampshire, locate the town, the author, and the manuscript. 
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Trent again has the dream of the cop, beating the kid in an alleyway -- only now, a crowd of people appears behind Trent, with axes, blocking any escape. At its center is Cane's agent. 

"He sees you," the agent says; the crowd hacks him into pieces. The cop stops beating the kid long enough to look at Trent -- his face mottled, diseased, malignant; "You want some too?" he bellows.


... and, Trent wakes up at home, having fallen asleep on his sofa over one of Cane's novels, relieved to find it was just a dream... until he turns to see the diseased cop sitting next to him, and wakes up, again; a dream within a dream.
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Trent and Styles drive on two-lane roads through endless late-Summer cornfields; Trent singing "America The Beautiful". Night falls. Styles tells Trent she's attracted to Cane's fiction because it scares her. And she likes being scared. Trent is amused. "What's to be scared about? It's not like it's real." Styles says:
"It's not real from your point of view -- and right now, reality shares your point of view. Reality is just what we tell each other it is. What scares me about Kane's work is, what happens if reality shared his point of view? ...Sane and insane easily switch places if the insane were to become the majority. You'd find yourself locked in a padded cell, wondering 'What happened to the world?' "
"It wouldn't happen to me," Trent says. "Oh, it would, if you realized everything you knew was gone," said Styles. "That'd be pretty lonely, being the last one left."

After an unsettling encounter with a kid on a bicycle - who becomes an old man on a bike ("I can't get out," he moans. "He won't let me out") - Trent lets Styles drive while he sleeps. On the radio, a talk show host asks, "Doctor, what are you saying? That there's this disease spreading across the country?"
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As Styles drives, the yellow centerline in the road disappears. Below the car, she makes out thick  clouds illuminated by lightning -- then, suddenly, she's driving over the road planks of a New England covered bridge and out into late afternoon daylight.  A sign nearby announces: Welcome To Hobb's End / The Heart Of New Hampshire / Enjoy Your Stay

The town has a Pepperidge Farm-style quaintness, but seems completely deserted. Trent and Styles drive to a rustic hotel, which features in Cane's novels, run by a Mrs. Pinkham -- who figured in Cane's novels as an axe murderess. They check in.

Trent keeps looking for the con. If it were a Cane novel, they should see a huge, black church from the hotel ... and they can. They drive there. Trent reads from one of Cane's novels, 


" 'This place had been the seat of an evil older than mankind and wider than the known universe... pain and suffering beyond human understanding. ... [inhabited by] a murderous race of creatures whose vile existence contaminated time itself, affecting history..."

Suddenly, cars roar up; a group of men with shotguns climb out -- one demanding Cane release his son from the church. Its doors open to reveal a little boy, then close. When they open again, a man stands just inside -- Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). 


The boy's father comes forward, but the doors bang close. A large pack of Dobermans appear, and attack. Styles and Trent are able to get to their car and flee back to the hotel.

Styles finally admits Trent was being played in a publicity game. "Only, you and I weren't supposed to find Hobb's End, but we didn't stage any of this. It's all in Cane's book. That's how I know it's real."

What's the new book -- 'In The Mouth Of Madness' -- about? Trent asks. "It's about the end, to everything," Styles says. "And it starts here, with an evil that returns and takes over, piece by piece... It's about people turning into creatures that aren't human anymore."
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Styles runs off, taking the car and driving to the church, where she finds Cane typing the last page of manuscript. "It's funny; for years, I thought I was making all this up," he says. "But They were telling me what to write -- giving me the power to make it all real. And now it is. All the Things, trying to break into our world." 

Cane holds her head over the title page of the manuscript. "See the instrument of their homecoming -- the new bible -- that starts the change... helps you see..."  He slams her head forward; she absorbs the entire book in a few seconds. Her eyes bleed.
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Styles returns to the hotel; Trent can see she's clearly altered -- "I'm losing me!" she shouts. Power in the hotel flickers. Trent is barely able to get to the car; he tries to leave town, but can't. Knocked unconscious, he wakes up in one side of a confessional at the Black Church. On the other side is Sutter Cane. "Want to know the problem with religion?" Cane asks.
"No one's believed enough to make [a new reality] real... My books have sold a billion copies; I've been translated into 18 languages. More people believe in my work than are reading the bible... When people begin to lose the ability to know the difference between fantasy and reality -- then The Old Ones can begin to make the journey back. The more people who believe, the faster the journey." 
Cane tells Trent he wants him to deliver the manuscript for "In The Mouth Of Madness" "You take it back to the world," Cane says. "This town wasn't here before I wrote it -- and neither were you. I made all this. I made you. I am god now !"  Trent tries to run, chased down a long tunnel by a pack of Old-One monsters...


-- and, Trent suddenly finds himself back in The World, on a gravel road in the middle of somewhere, New Hampshire. He drops the manuscript as if it were a box of plutonium, hitches a ride to a town, takes a motel room.

The next day, an unnamed someone has delivered a package for him. A large envelope. "But nobody knows I'm here," Trent says; the motel clerk smiles. "Well, somebody does." In the envelope is Cane's manuscript. Trent burns it in the bathroom sink of his motel room, a page at a time.

Back in New York, he meets with the publisher, Harglow, and describes everything that had happened to him and Styles over (what to him have been) the previous ten days.  Harglow says, "That's a hell of a story" --  But Trent already located Cane and the manuscript, and delivered it -- a month ago. And Linda Styles? "I've never heard of her". 

Trent, who knows Cane's novels are altering reality -- that Trent himself may be nothing more than a character in Cane's imagination -- is horrified that Madness has already been published; Harglow shrugs. "The movie comes out next month," he says.


Trent becomes increasingly paranoid. Finally, he appears at a bookstore, where huge lines of customers wait to buy Madness. He's dressed identically to Cane's agent, earlier, and carrying an axe. He asks a man in line, "Do you read Sutter Cane?", kills him with the axe, and is taken into custody.
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In the asylum, Trent has come to the end of his tale. Declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, he's been institutionalized -- "and, it's safer, these days, being in here," Trent tells Dr. Wrenn. "In ten years, maybe less, there will be no people. The human race will just be a bedtime story for their children. Nothing more."

Wrenn walks out of the cell. Dr. Sapperstein asks if he believes what Trent has been saying, and Wrenn slowly walks away without a word.

Conditions in the world outside the asylum begin to break down. Then, some Things begin rampaging through the wards; Trent can't see them clearly, hiding in his locked cell. The next day, his cell door magically opens, and Trent walks away from the asylum and into a world as deserted as Hobb's End had appeared.


A radio in an abandoned ambulance announces: the world appears to have been overrun with monstrous creatures, including mutating humans, and that outbreaks of suicide and mass murder are commonplace. Trent walks into a nearby urban area, sees a theatre showing the film version of Cane's novel -- the marquee mentions him, specifically, by name -- and goes inside.


Trent finds a seat in the empty theatre, carrying a super-sized tub of popcorn. The movie is precisely the film that we've all been watching, so far, and Trent begins laughing hysterically. He has ended up exactly as Styles had said ("That'd be pretty lonely, being the last one left"). 

Trent starts laughing as he watches himself self on screen, insisting he isn't a puppet, and that reality is concrete, knowable; the Truth. But Cane's version was believed by enough people to make Styles' description come true -- "Reality is just what we tell each other it is." There is no concrete truth; everything can be altered, with enough collective belief

Cane allowed The Old Ones to break through into this dimension and destroy it, just for the pure gibbering delight of destruction. Was Trent ever an actual person, or just a character in Cane's novel?  What is real? As the end of humankind sinks in, all Trent can do is laugh.


The central plot of In The Mouth Of Madness is the social construction of reality -- what we collectively agree is real -- and Magical Thinking: if enough people surrender to a belief in artifice and fantasy, can unbelievable things be made concrete and real, just from a sheer act of will?

What the film does not do is show what happens when that kind of magical thinking is translated -- from the personal to the societal and political. 

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Wednesday, August 11, 2021

This Is Your Boat Deck Wednesday Update For 2nd Class Passengers

A Barking Rant 

God's Away On Business

Using BandAids On Brain Cancer

Prosecutions for the January 6th attempt to derail Congressional certification of the  Presidential vote are dissolving into surrealistic theatre. The investigation, involving so many Federal resources, was intense and focused -- it matched the seriousness of the event. But any investigator knows a case they've built can be chopped up, watered down, even ignored by the prosecuting authority in their jurisdiction.

Charges have been brought by the DOJ against 605 rioters. The lead felony offense in the Federal indictments -- the most serious violation against each of them -- is "obstruction of an official proceeding"; attorneys for the defendants argued back that the joint session of Congress to certify electors' votes is a ceremonial, not an official, session, and the charge should be dismissed.

What constitutes an official Congressional proceeding; its never needed to be defined. One Federal judge in Washington was frustrated enough to comment that the DOJ's charge was so constitutionally vague that it could easily be overturned on appeal.

But there seems to be no rush to bring justice. Some defendants on bail are being allowed to vacation, attend weddings, or go backpacking out of the country; it's all quite leisurely. And while estimates of damage repair costs to the U.S. Capitol are over $1.4 million -- the total of monetary fines levied against the 605 defendants for that damage is... $2,000. 

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Cosplay Conspiracy Is Too A Crime

More serious, the DOJ is not pursuing actual conspiracy charges against any defendants. The FBI claims no such information has been discovered, but an independent review of social media posts in the weeks leading up to the insurrection show clear planning and coordination -- tactics, and objectives. 

Review of cellphone videos and social media traffic show at least two groups of insurrectionists appeared at the Capitol in full tactical dress and appeared to follow military-style movement discipline. At least two of them carried zip-ties inside the Senate chamber

Lt. Col. (Ret) Larry Brock, USAF, (At Left), and unnamed Cletus in Senate Chamber

Then there are the recent revelations about the attempt by Trump and his allies to entice then-acting Attorney General Rosen to support The Leader's false narrative of a stolen election through a letter from the DOJ claiming irregularities in swing state voting. 

Trump told Rosen in a December 27th phone call that all he had to do was agree to the DOJ letter -- "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen", according to contemporaneous notes taken by acting deputy AG Richard Donoghue. 

Meetings between Trump and his allies and toadies were held at the White House in December and January. Trump (and others) made phone calls to election officials in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, trying to find weak links who would support The Lie. Trump inserted loyalists into key intelligence and Defense Department positions; the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned to resign if he ordered the Armed Forces to enforce martial law. Then came January 6th.

(Photo: Mother Jones)

You could ask whether there was an attempted coup in the United States; it's a matter capable of question, but no one wants to ask it. As with prosecution of the insurrectionists who breached the Capitol -- the Justice Department and Attorney General Garland seem tired, uninterested in pursuing Trump or his toadies for conspiracy. Biden said recently that pursuing Trump is a "bad idea". 

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One might be forgiven for thinking that our Justice system just doesn't care. The message our government seems to be sending is attempt a takeover; pay no penalty. That there is no political will in the government to step down hard on any attempt to subvert the Constitution -- and to appoint a fat, lying, narcissistic con artist as President For Life of the United States of America. 

It's almost as if they were signaling to the Owners who financed the coup attempt (Koch, Mercers, Murdochs; others), and their hired front men -- Trump, Stevie Bannon; screeching evangelical preachers; and the Red-Hat Orcs -- telling them: try again. 

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Meanwhile, the usual suspects in Congress seem determined to push every situation as close to the edge as possible -- keeping the level of viciousness and blood-feud outrage high among the Faithful Red-Hat Cletuses. 

There's a drumbeat, too, on Murdoch media; Tucker Carlson travelled to Hungary, then aired on Fox his extended infomercial gushing with praise for its authoritarian, proto-fascist government, and its Leader, Viktor Orban. It was a love letter to Lil' Viktor, and a message to Americans that -- with a Strong Daddy and United [White] People -- a fascist form of government can be good, for loyal white people. Such a pretty, orderly country under Orban, the Strong Daddy -- as Trump was, and will be again.

Little Tooker Hearts the Strong Daddy, the Good Daddy; the Fuhrer

Little Tucker, like the Congressional Rethugs, want to keep the level of hatred and calls for Action! high -- all for Der Tag, when the call goes forth, and the loyal [white] people will Own The Libs once and for all. Scores will be settled and the strong shall rule; non-white people will disappear again, and all will Love The Leader, or else. 

And the Red Hats continue to lap up the vomit NewsCorp and the Murdochs provide; a fantasy of victimization and marginalization -- and now, they've twisted their politics around the axle of the Covid wagon: Mask mandates, vaccinations, are infringements on personal freedom and cannot be allowed. Marjie Green, Rand Paul, Teddy Cruz, Loren Boebert and others screech and preen and strut in front of the cameras, decrying this vast conspiracy against freedom-loving Americans.

And tens of thousands of bikers crowd into Sturgis, South Dakota, for their annual festival -- cheered on by the state's governor, who wants to be the next Trump. Last years' event was cheered on by her, too. 500,000 people showed up. It was later proven to be a Superspreader event for Covid; this year will be no different -- given the Delta variant, it will be worse.

...and the Delta variant roars across the country. For someone who actually trusts science, scientists, and professionals to provide the best data possible, watching people on the Right equating vaccination with slavery or the Holocaust is unbelievable. There is almost no way to describe it, except as metaphorically a descent into schizophrenia, psychosis.


I'm an end product of the Enlightenment -- and people behaving like superstitious peasants, refusing to listen to anyone but Murdoch media 'personalities', or gibbering Sky God preachers, about, well, anything... I find it hard to believe it's happening. America hasn't had a long spasm of irrational nationalism since 1917 or 1942 -- but this is different. 

40% of our adult population claims that science and fact are lies. That bleach and faith in Jesus are prophylactic miracles, or a cure, for Covid. That simple, common-sense public health measures (masking and social distancing) are part of a sinister plot organized by a One-World cabal of pedophiles to steal the election from Trump and his loving supporters, to control Americans and remove their freedom. 

All the verbiage aside -- I'm speechless in the face of this level of malicious, willful ignorance. I don't know how the Cletuses can do it -- particularly when The Truth is staring them in the face: The largest number of new Covid infections consists of unvaccinated individuals. States with the highest percentage of Maga-ites, or Trumpist Rethugs, also have the highest new case numbers in America. This is what happens.

Surge bedding outside a Texas hospital, to accommodate high numbers of Covid patients 

The governors of two states hit exceptionally hard -- Abbott in Texas and DeSantis in Florida --  have signed orders banning any mandates by school districts, or businesses to wear masks or to be vaccinated. DeSantis threatened that school districts which violate the order will have salaries or state funding frozen.

As unbelievable as that seems -- at the same time, DeSantis and Abbott are asking for help from other states to deal with the rising number of the sick who need hospitalization, as medical facilities in each state are overflowing with Covid victims; as in the Fall of 2020, ICU nurses are posting videos describing how bad this is. And it is bad.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released it's 2021 report on the state of  deterioration of the earth's living species, weather, soil, water and temperature. No surprise: it's bad. 

But this report -- unlike the others released by the IPCC since 1988 -- says unequivocally that their report is "a code red for humanity". It's effectively too late to prevent a rise in average world temperatures by 1.5 Centigrade, and as a result there will be a rising number of "extreme weather events", wildfires, disease. 

Evacuees watch from a ferry as wildfires consume the Greek island of Evia

The best humanity can do to mitigate the effects already put in motion is to completely change the course of the major streams of the global economy towards that end. It is all or nothing -- unless world governments do what they've always done and allow themselves to be bought cheaply by the fossil fuel, mining, aerospace, timber, and farming megacorps. Then I guess we're well and truly fucked.
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But on the bright side -- hey, we have Our Owners, the Oligarchs, at play! Richard Branson got into space -- well, kind of -- ahead of Jeffy Bezos; yay! But meanwhile, Elon got the coveted contract with the U.S. government! Which means a Virgin made it above the Amazon, but both were sprayed with Musk.

Jeffy didn't like that. He filed papers and said it was unfair and he would just give more money to NASA and he would too just give the government a real price reduction (which would be recouped with interest in Jeffy's pricing structure; it looked good to say we'll charge less right now!). But the government said Jeffy was a silly and ha ha ha no. Jeffy cried, and took away things from the subcreatures in his labor camps to make himself feel better. And lots of people bought stuff and made him more money too. Yay!

Our Oligarch Owners caper and play, and someday will all go away -- to the emerald Isle of New Zealand, to escape all the Bad Things. We, of course, will not -- proof positive that god favors Jeffy and Elon and Marky and Richard and all His Billionaires. Because otherwise they'd have to bake and die with the Little People Worker Bees! 
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Please go to the Boat Deck for a Second-Class sing-along with the ship's orchestra! There will be a free, small soda for those of you who remembered to keep your coupons. After, we will assist the First Class passengers into their boats and wish them a hearty Bon Voyage! and wave to them, until.

Meanwhile, don't cry, or make a scene. That will just spoil the party for everyone else; look at how brave they are. And remember, that small soda is a privilege. They can take it away any time they want.
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MEHR, MIT EIN SPOTTSBILLIG KLEINER SODA:  Here, courtesy of The Soul Of America, an essay on the balance between the sinkhole of facts we observe, and the sticky commodity of faith in a future.
We must always act from a sincere love of our fellows, but never give in to maudlin sentimentality or (worse) facile irrationalism. In theory, so long as one avoids silly ideological tropes, it is not so difficult to keep the two apart. But on a day to day level it can seem very difficult indeed. Especially when one is faced with nigh-inevitable catastrophe.
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Wednesday, November 4, 2020

The Mad King Shared His Madness, And So His Madness Stayed

Delusion

Transcript of Remarks
President Donald Trump
East Room of the White House
2:20 AM EST November 4, 2020

Well, thank you very much, thank you. Thank you very much. Please sit, thank you. This is, without question, the latest news conference I’ve ever had. [laughter] Thank you. I appreciate it very much, and I want to thank the American people for their tremendous support. 

Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight and... a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it. We will not stand for it.

I want to thank the First Lady, my entire family, and Vice-President Pence, Mrs. Pence, for being with us all through this. And we were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything, and... all of a sudden, it was just called off. 

The results tonight have been phenomenal, and we are getting ready, I mean literally, we were just all set to get outside, and just celebrate something that was just so beautiful, so good. And such a vote, such a success. The citizens of this country have come out in record numbers, this is a record -- there’s never been anything like it, to support our incredible movement.

We won states that we weren’t expected to win. Florida—we didn’t win it, we won it by a lot. And we won the great state of Ohio. We won Texas, we won Texas. We won Texas by 700,000 votes and they don’t even include in the tabulations. It’s also clear that we have won Georgia. We’re up by 2.5 per cent or 117,00 votes, with only seven per cent left; they’re never gonna catch us, they can’t catch us. Likewise, we’ve clearly won North Carolina. We were up 1.4 per cent or 77,000 votes with only approximately five per cent left. They can’t catch us.

We also, if you look and you see, Arizona, we have a lot of life in that. And somebody said, somebody declared that it was a victory for -- and maybe it will be; I mean, that’s possible -- but certainly there were a lot of votes out there that we could get because we’re now just coming into what you call Trump territory, I don’t know what you call it. But these were friendly Trump voters. And that could be overturned. 

The gentleman that called it, I watched tonight, he said, “Well, we think it’s fairly unlikely that he could catch…” Well fairly unlikely? And we don’t even need it, we don’t need that. That was just, a state that if we would have gotten it, it would have been nice. Arizona. But there’s a possibility, maybe even a good possibility… in fact, since I saw that originally it’s been changed and the numbers have substantially come down, just in a small amount of votes. So we want that obviously to stay in play.

But most importantly, we’re winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes. [cheers] We’re up six hundred -- think of this, think of this, think of this -- we’re up 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 690,000. These aren’t even close, it’s not like, oh, it’s close. With 64 per cent of the vote in, it’s going to be almost impossible to catch and we’re coming into good Pennsylvania areas where they happen to like your president. So we’ll probably expand that. We’re winning Michigan—I’ll tell ya, I looked at the numbers, I said, whoa; I said wow, that’s a lot — by almost 300,000 votes, and 65 percent of the vote is in. 

And we’re winning Wisconsin, we don’t need all of them. We need, because when you add Texas in -- which wasn’t added; I spoke with the really wonderful Governor of Texas just a little while ago, Greg Abbott, and he said congratulations, he called me to congratulate me on winning Texas. We won Texas. I don’t think they’ve finished quite the tabulation but there’s no way, and it was almost complete. But he congratulated me and he said by the way, what’s going on? I’ve never seen anything like this. Can I tell you what? Nobody has.

So we won by 107,000 votes with 81 percent of the vote, that’s Michigan. So when you take those three states in particular and you take all of the others, I mean we have so many, we had such a big night, you just take a look at all of these states that we’ve won tonight. And then you take a look at the kind of margins that we’ve won by and all of a sudden, it’s not like we’re up 12 votes and we have 60 percent left. We won states and all of a sudden I said what happened to the election? It’s off. And we have all these announcers saying what happened, and then they said: oooh. 

Because you know what happened? They knew they couldn’t win so they said let’s go to court. And did I predict this, Newt? Did I say this? I’ve been saying this from the day I heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots, I said exactly this. Because either they were going to win, or if they didn’t win, they’ll take us to court. 

So Florida was a tremendous victory, 377,000; Texas as we said. Ohio, think of this. Ohio, a tremendous state, a big state, I love Ohio, we won by 8.1 percent, 461,000, think of it, almost 500,000 votes. North Carolina, big victory with North Carolina. And so we won there, we lead by 76,000 votes with almost nothing left. And all of a sudden everything just stopped. 

This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election -- and frankly, we did win this election. [cheers]  So our goal now is to ensure the integrity, for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation. 

We want the law to be used in a proper manner, so we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list, okay? It’s a very sad moment. To me, this is a very sad moment. And we will win this. As far as I’m concerned, we already have won it. So I just want to thank you, I want to thank all of our support, I want to thank all of the people that worked with us, and Mr. Vice President, say a few words please.
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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Big Guy Barrel-Bottom Time

It Has Come To This


What, you expected 'culture'?

When Gorjira gets bored, look out. Liked His lead-guitar solo vocals, though. We'd better hope the Apocalypse, too also, has its "light moments".
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MEHR, MIT CONTENT-FREE BONUS:

Hopefully, there will be content over the wochenende, but as is painfully obvious for now, I Got Nothin'.  It happens, sometimes:  you're moving through your day, and bam -- there's just nothing in your head. And, it's kind of peaceful. All those important and meaningful topics you were just thinking about are still present but oddly muted, outside on the street and only dimly registering in your consciousness. Meanwhile, you are gently nestled in the cocoon of  a whole buncha Nothin', and for a few moments not even entirely sure what species you are.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Conway Twitty.

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo At End Of Blog Filler
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Thursday, January 4, 2018

In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning

Chutulu Makes To Bellow And To Squirm
Wonderboy's "administration" is not an actual government. It's a convoluted, dysfunctional psychodrama. It doesn't bear much relation to the actual world -- though events in the psychodrama have real effect on large numbers of human beings in that actual world.

The principal reason the United States hasn't come apart at the seams more than it already has is the continuity being provided by the bureaucracy of the U.S. government -- which Wonderboy and the alt-Right refer to as the 'Deep State'.

< breaking Godwin's Law >
After Hitler came to power in January, 1933, a new nazi government relied on the old Weimar bureaucratic structure -- not only to support radical change, but to keep the mundane aspects of daily government running -- just as Weimar had used the old Kaiserzeit government to usher in a Republic.

The nazis began a campaign in 1933-34 to push out and replace mid- and high-level members of government bureaucracies -- Jews, those too politically "Red", or otherwise unwilling to cooperate with the New Order. This program was instituted across the board, but particularly true in the Arts, Finance, and The Police. Also, those in government who had secretly (or not so secretly) been early nazi party members settled scores with personal rivals in their departments by denouncing them.

In the lower ranks, there was similar culling and denunciation -- but most government functionaries only saw themselves as serving the legally established order, carrying out their jobs as, duty bound, they always had.

As Chancellor, Hitler disliked the details of running a government or making decisions he saw as beneath him, delegating day-to-day governance -- to his Ministers, and party control to the district Gauleiters.

Nazi control of Germany and the daily life of its citizens was defined by the principles of the nazi party, and backed by new laws in 1934 and 35, primarily against Jews, and government functionaries ensured they were carried out.  The success (albeit limited) of the nazi government's social and financial plans between 1933 and 1938 were in part due to the effort of a government whose structure was rooted in the Hohenzollern era.

After 1933, even if the German version of the Deep State had tried to slow or circumvent Hitler's directives, when the Second World War began, Germany's focus as a military-political state shifted towards 'national security'. Any attempt to throw sand in the gears would be met with the harshest penalties.

Ultimately, Hitler's method of governing -- based more on delusion than reality -- and the toadying obeisance of his direct reports as they squabbled for power and influence, even at the end, overshadowed the government bureaucracies which helped make his grip on power a reality.
< /breaking Godwin's Law >
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 Just Coincidence In The Psychodrama (Digby's Hullabaloo)
[P.S.: Read From Bottom To Top]
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MEHR, MIT EINE KLEINES BETRACHTUNG:  Just a thought -- I expect there will be a chorus of support for release of "The Paper" "The Post", a film extolling the courage of the New York Times'  Washington Post's publishing of 'The Pentagon Papers', which detailed how the U.S. government (i.e., several Presidential administrations, the Defense Department and the Military) had lied to Congress and the public about the scope of and reasons behind America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

There is still little support for Edward Snowden's whistleblowing of the massive violation of privacy of Americans through surveillance of digital communications, among other things. 

Worse, I don't think many people today remember how important the release of those secret documents was, or the context of the era within which they appeared. Between 1961 and 1971 (when the Papers were published), the Bay Of Pigs took place; the U.S. began increasing its involvement in Southeast Asia; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred; the assassination of JFK; the Gulf Of Tonkin Incident in 1964, which prompted a massive deployment of U.S. troops to Vietnam; the assassination of MLK, Jr., and RFK; the 1968 Tet Offensive; the election of Richard Nixon;  the Cointelpro and Phoenix programs, And the War ground on.

(One reason people may not consider the impact of the Papers' release: our current culture is dominated by digital information and digital storage -- easy to access, if you have system permissions.  But handling information in 1971 was as it had always been -- paper documents, stored in files -- and obtaining copies of it took more time, subterfuge and planning than simply copying files to a thumb drive.)

Worse still, I don't believe many people understand or even care about the programs and capabilities Snowden revealed, or the reasons behind his decision to do so.

Even more worse, I couldn't identify the actual name of the film, and the fact that the Pre-Jeffy WaPo was the original venue for publishing the Papers.  The Dog grows old.
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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

More Unspeakableness

An Entire Chicken In A Can


Even H.P. Lovecraft Could Not Have Envisioned The Badness

This isn't going to become a regular item -- but another thing in a can was made known to me recently. As a Dog, I'll eat a wide variety of food (and the occasional non-food) items -- but even this is too much for me to contemplate: Sweet Sue's Canned Whole Chicken.


It Emerges: Ia! Ia! Sweeta Sue Chiken ARRROOOOOO!!

First, the unsuspecting housewife releases the Thing from the chamber where it slumbered. Then, without warning, it grew -- and grew, and began to threaten mankind with the unbelievable fury of unleashed cosmic forces!!!

And, as we all know, you don't want to mess around with Cosmic Forces.



Unleashed, The Beast Began An Orgy Of Feeding --
But, Only In North Beach And Fisherman's Wharf

ANNOUNCER: We're here on CBS Sportstalk Radio; I'm Bob Hampton, and we're talking about the giant tentacled monster that's making life a little hectic for the drive-time commute in the Bay Area this morning... And how about those Giants, huh? Will the Raiders make their move to Santa Clara? Let's take your calls.

Hello, you're on CBS Sportstalk 96.

CHTULU: Hi, Bob; this is Chtulu from Ryleh. Love your show.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks. Where is Ryleh? Is that Contra Costa County, near Pinole?

CHTULU: Actually, it's an ancient city, sunken deep in the ocean for many, many Millennia, and initially a base for many of the Old Ones. You see, the history you've been taught about your world, and the Universe, is about as wrong as Y. A. Tittle staying in football past Forty. Many things existed on Earth, long before human history began. And, one of them was Me -- I've been out the loop for a while, but I'm back now and just wanted to AAARRRRRRRROOOOOO!!!!



Sorry about that, Bob. It's just so good to be out.

ANNOUNCER: Uh-huh. You just get out of the Big Q, huh?

CHTULU: Not a prison as you would understand it, Bob. But I was just listening to your program this morning and did want to comment on the appearance of the 'tentacled monster' you mentioned a moment ago.

ANNOUNCER: What's your comment?

CHTULU: Well, you see -- the stars are right, Bob, and the Great Wheel has come around; and it's time for the ancient forces that once ruled this planet to assert themselves. So I don't think anyone should be surprised when they open a can of something like a whole chicken, only to have it transform into something as big as the Bank Of America building in a matter of hours and threaten all of human civilization.

ANNOUNCER: Okay. Did you catch the Giants' game last night by chance, Chtulu?

CHTULU: What?

ANNOUNCER: Did you see last nights' game?

CHTULU: Bob -- with all due respect; I'm a long-time listener, and I've always liked this program -- but we're talking about a radical shift in human consciousness, here. We're talking about the most beautiful mysteries, and the most terrifying nightmares, of humanity made manifest in this world simply through the energy of thought. This is an event that's... well, it's Galactic in its implications, and frankly, Bob, in light of that I'm a little less interested in what Buster Posey will or won't do this season.

ANNOUNCER: [Pauses] So you're saying Posey won't do well heading into the season?

CHTULU: Huh? Bob -- try focusing a little. There's an Octopus the size of Cleveland out in the Bay. I see on CNN that they're considering carpet-bombing the Golden Gate with nerve agents -- nerve agents, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: All right; well, that's an interesting perspective, but I'd say Posey's gonna have a great career with the San Francisco Giants, and we look forward to that.

CHTULU: Not going to mean a thing if he gets eaten, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: Okay; and we thank you for your call. Hey, the time is 11:30, and whenever you just don't have time to spend on meal preparation, Sweet Sue's Whole Chicken In A Can can help!


The Peasants Begin To Understand: They're Doomed --
In The Horrifying Tales Of The Plush Chtulu!

After all, while Sparkle Christmas Tree Sweater Bear, for example, was a friend to all boys and girls, and Ellie the Happy Elephant was beloved by all who knew her, neither they nor any of the other animals commanded a worldwide fanatical cult of believers ready to do their bidding, not to mention being an ageless, indestructible creature from Beyond the Stars.