A missing girl, a cult-like organization and its guru, a well-meaning public agency no one has ever heard of, and the actual brick-and-mortar cities of the San Francisco Bay Area. These are the ingredients in a reality-bending game profiled in Spencer McCall’s documentary film The Institute, which showed at this year's Slamdance Film Festival. More than 10,000 people played the Games of Nonchalance, but who was behind them and what was the point?
This one's a lark - it's actually a film about a cult-themed game - but the set-up is based on a understanding of cult psychology and environment, starting with unleashing it on San Francisco, where - armed with little-to-no information at all - many curious "open-minded" types simply do as they're told. Ought to be somewhat as entertaining as watching the real thing:
This is getting pretty old, pretty fast - I tell you something, then we have to wait days, weeks, months, or even years, to see someone else noticed what was obvious when I said it:
"Cult-like followings appear to be something of a trending topic among dramas this season."
You don't say? Well, apparently not only hadn't I noticed but none of my "friends" in blogging noticed either. They didn't notice it's happening, that I mentioned it first, that it's a topic worth mentioning (nothing about cults is worth mentioning according to this crew) that there's a reason for the attention on cults, or that my long-term attention to the subject has been (shall we say) "prophetic".
And whether we have to wait days, weeks, months, or even years more, time will tell it - since others won't - and in a manner befitting the transgression,….
"I really wasn’t welcome at the BBC. They froze me out, because I don’t believe in global warming. My career dried up. I was thrown out of my own conservation groups and I got spat at in London.”
"You owed it to me, Lance, and you dropped the ball. After what you’ve done to me and what you’ve done to my family, and you couldn’t own up to it? Now we’re supposed to believe you?
You had one chance at the truth, and this was it,…He used to be my friend and he decimated me."
Draw a finger through the dust and cobwebs on any page of their "ancient teachings" and we'll be sure to glean (sparkling as ever) the "spiritual" truths they've been seeking from below:
"They're pretty wacky. And it takes a special kind of asshole to bully a cancer patient."
So, what was the big non-news story yesterday? Oh yeah, Lupe Fiasco. And today, it's Michelle Obama rolling her eyes. Seriously - along with introducing an early primer on gay slang - they've been reduced to analyzing body language (an exact science) before tap-tap-tapping away, to let us know their trust-me-it's-accurate conclusions. It kind-of makes me wonder:
Between politicians and journalists (and other bloggers) who wastes our time more?
Between sets I chatted with concert-goers about the rap lyrics debate. Vinayak Londhe, a 26-year-old manager for Zodiac, a flashy Indian clothing label, was a little surprised he didn’t have to cross a picket line to get into Snoop’s concert. “I was thinking it was going to be controversial,” Londhe said, sporting a chic dress shirt with a black-and-white striped Nehru collar. “People complain about Honey Singh but Snoop Dogg is much bigger.” He chalked up the inconsistency to Snoop rapping in English while Singh raps in an Indian vernacular language that is more accessible to the masses of the subcontinent. When I asked to snap his photo, he obliged, flashing the gangsta hand signal for “West Coast.”
Jackie Chan may have stirred up a maelstrom in the US, but in Asia, he's laughing all the way to the bank.
Last month, the 58-year-old action star claimed in an interview that the US is "the most corrupt" country in the world, and argued that Chinese citizens should keep criticisms of their country to themselves.
"If you talk about corruption, the entire world, the America, has no corruption? [It is] the most corrupt in the world," he said in a Dec. 13 broadcast on Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV.
When the comments spread to the American press last week, they sparked widespread controversy.
Yet while the comments aroused indignation in the US, where Chan built his film career, they have done nothing to dent the popularity of his new film, "CZ12" (short for Chinese Zodiac).
Lupe Fiasco got kicked off stage for criticizing Obama - fine. Stupid all around, but fine. If that's what it takes for these morons on the Right to notice Rap, I'll take it, but only as a further demonstration of how politically off-base our side is, in outlook, strategy, and (most importantly) results.
An ego boost, maybe, if you're a very small person.
If you accept the notion that Rap acts as some sort of Black CNN, contrast his Lupe fiasco (heh) with what's really going on in conservative minds - and compare that with what the unnoticed Kanye West (another Obama "knucklehead") has had going on all along:
From a pop culture point of view, it is interesting to note that [Kanye's] short-film, intended to be viewed by the general public (especially young people), describes the concept of power with overt Masonic symbolism and occult references. This causes the uninformed viewers to unconsciously associate those symbols with the concept of Power, while “those in the know” get the “insider’s wink” sent by this video. Power ultimately becomes another piece in the on-going process called the “Revelation of the Method,” where the true source of power gradually and subliminally reveals itself to the world and occult rituals take place right in front of the public’s eyes.
How long before the complete revelation?
Or - asked another way - how long before conservatives discover what's a threat? Where it's coming from? What's got legs and is *truly* politically exploitable? Lupe's to the left of Obama - and mad about it. Big deal. Kanye's bigger than he is, and Kanye (or someone working on his behalf) has multiple daily "occult rituals take place right in front of the public’s eyes" specifically as a way of getting subversive ideas into the minds of their kids. And it's working like a charm. Mom.
If you ask this conservative, a real "teaching moment" should be in order,…
Folks, when I notice somebody, in TMR's site-specific way, you can say I'm practically pinning a sign on their back to stay noticed. Not in the media but in reality. One time for the cameras? Sure:
Whether you look at Mitt and The Mo's, bad Republicans, Scientology, Glenn Reynolds - even the Democrats - if TMR has voiced the opinion they needed to slow their roll, ethically, they seem to be slowed or slowing. It ain't just the post-holiday news period. Something significant may be happening:
