Virtue Signaling

Cornel West blames Trump’s ‘hypermasculinity’ for drawing Black voters away from Democrats

Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale

An energy healer and prolific rapist 

   

 Mormon church now owns $2BILLION of US farmland, with more acreage than Bill Gates and China combined 

   

 Our ancient ancestors cut off their fingers to worship prehistoric deities 

   

 2023 Was Not The Year Of "No One Wants To Work Anymore," But The Year Of "No One Wants To Work For YOU Anymore" 

   

 Widow of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi granted US asylum

Las Cruces ‘QAnon’ believer sentenced for threat

Netflix-Famed South Korean Religious Sect Leader Gets 23-Year Prison Term Over Sex Crimes

The Crack Emcee Has Made It Back To San Francisco

The King - returned to his throne,...

In case anyone wondered/cared, I've made it back to San Francisco safe and sound, with the last shit I own. I was even on Radio Valencia this morning, discussing music with my pal, Uncle Ray, just like I'd never left.

As you can see, above, Ray's in one circle of my friends/artists that, most famously, includes Keith Knight, who draws The K Chronicles, a black underground comic featured in our country's "Weekly" family of newspapers (SF Weekly, Seattle Weekly, etc.). After talking, Ray caught me unawares by requesting I be on his show - and, then, he did it again - asking me to return, on-the-air. So, it looks like I might have my first new gig, just days after finding myself back in The City. 

 That's a BIG difference from Middle America right there.

That's not to say it isn't weird to be back, considering The Dotsies have (finally) taken over, raising the price of everything four-and-five fold. Will I be able to "make it" again, under these new, and more expensive, circumstances? I was expecting the tech turnover, so I don't know if it'll be as difficult for me, since I'm used to how creepy The Dotsie's new wealth can make things.

Most SF "artists" are moving away now - so I'll have to wait and see,…

 

From The Soul: Of The Soul: De La Soul (Superheroes)

We just gave away our entire recorded catalogue for free.

Black people say to keep an eye on what you value:

"Getting turned into living fire by cosmic rays is an everyday thing, but adoption is weird."

Value's revealed as the outline of what you don't,...

It's Like Pornography (For Some Of TMR's Readership)

Southern Cross: Annuit Coeptis (CSA Confederate States of America, Volume 1)

PTSD Can Only Be Transferred By Wearing A Yarmulke

Jews went through The Holocaust, it lasted for 12 Years, and everyone understands the implications:

"Art Spiegelman's 1991 graphic novel Maus,...is focused on how trauma lingers even through generations,…"

But when it comes to blacks - after 400 equally-brutal years of slavery, Jim Crow, etc. - whites seem, not just flabbergasted anyone would suggest blacks feel, too, but actively and openly hostile to the idea.

Why is that?

Comic Book Franchises: No Respect For Our Memories

"Now for the guys. What a mess. One guy is in a skinny tie like he’s the British Invasion and the other guy is Dead Poet’s Society. The guys are just drones in this show, endlessly circulating around the females hoping for a singular opportunity to mate with them and then die,...

...The guys look identical. I notice this a lot in these fantasy and adventure shows. The males are cast with actors who almost look identical. It’s because they don’t really matter. The women are the stars here. The two guys’ hairstyles are identical non-descript mushes of off-black on top of eggheads. The guy standing behind Lady Doctor Who is probably named 'Colin' or 'Grant' or something. The guy on the right is named 'Hey you.'"

I Drew This (I Really Did) And Know About Lots Of Stuff

"The Gipper" by The Crack Emcee

Incredible. This Althouse blurb might inspire a new feature on TMR - Jobs White People Get:

"The comics artist Lynda Barry joins the University of Wisconsin faculty as an assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity."

Or should it be called "Jobs White People Are Given"? 

I'm not sure:

 I just know they're never around when I'm looking,...

 

"Je Suis Celui Que Vous êtes il Que Vous êtes Moi Et Nous Sommes Tous Ensemble" Is No Joke In French

How did "being open-minded" get to be considered good, when so many examples of it's pitfalls surround us?

Roger Gonnet,...is the subject of a special feature in the latest edition of French magazine XXI,.... 

This time however, his journey from dedicated Scientologist to the movement's most vociferous critic in France is told in the graphic-novel format. 

Gonnet's story is the centrepiece of a 34-page dossier dedicated to Scientology in the latest edition of XXI, which appears quarterly. 

L'Evadé de la Secte (roughly, He Escaped from the Cult) is built around his experience of the movement: but it also works in the basic story of Dianetics, Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. 

Bringing his story to life in a 30-page strip is Renaud De Heyn, a Belgian comic-book artist and illustrator with several books to his name. 

...De Heyn recounts how Gonnet and his wife Françoise got pulled into Scientology by his uncle, who with an American friend ran a successful franchise of the movement. 

At the time Gonnet was a business consultant and Françoise a teacher: but this was in 1973, at the tail end of what was still a thriving hippy movement in France, when people were open to all kinds of unconventional ideas.

Tell me something I don't know - TMR's got a "delusional thinking" tag. 

At the bottom of the post - look.

I'd love to have someone illustrate my cult story, especially for the French, since part of it takes place there and I find the frogs, generally, so on-the-mark about cults but so "off" when assessing America. And the cult of homeopathy. 

We, both, require more study.

Where was I? I don't know - Scientology's on trial in France, and will probably be getting the boot soon, or something. In this, we can learn from The Frog Nation. Nobody needs this shit.

 But make no mistake: 

From here on out,...

That's about as "open-minded" as we should plan on getting about anything.

FOR REALS,...

Smashing Day

 I started this post early in the morning, and then had to leave for the day, working. I was planning on saying something about the difference between Tony Soprano and James Gandolfini - especially this thing about everybody checking out his stool sample - but then I ran across The Idiotic Cleanse Craze and the Modern Theology of Juice Fasts and - struck dumb - I thought, what more is there to say, huh? 

 Can't a guy just die?

   

 No, of course he can't. Because everybody else is scared to die. Can't just live either. Paula Dean (is that her name?) got asked a direct question, gave a direct answer, and now she's gone from the fucking Food Network. Crazy.

What country do these people think we live in? She's supposed to get her own reality show.

   

 One thing about living in America, as opposed to other countries I've visited, it is a cauldron. Like, try as I might to avoid even thinking about race (because I know it's unimportance) I can't escape everybody else thinking about it, acting on it, whether pro or con. So there's an unavoidable undertow, no matter what I think. The numbers, who aren't here yet, are too vast. If you're Huck Finn and all the rubes are in class, what does that leave for you to deal with today? Hall monitors and thugs. 

 And a lot of strip mawls if you make it out.

   

 So nothing's surprising. Looking at things now, from my marriage falling apart to the Republicans running Romney, I'm STILL feeling (a little) like Bugs Bunny when he "stepped" out of that falling house, defying gravity as it's smashed to pieces. That's supposed to be our heritage - and instinct. 

You want to play this game? Go on, play it. Over there.

There's enough of everything to keep you busy.

   

But "Bugs" would outsmart 'em and "Tony" wouldn't do it.

  So get beat up if you want to (said the man with a stab wound in his back) I like it as it is:

A TMR tip of my evening beer to "the pursuit of happiness,..."

Interlude: "Jimmy's End" By Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins

Epic (If The Movie's Anything Like The Trailer - Big "If")

And what's Kevin Costner doing in there?

There Is No Real Difference Between NOTs And Knots,...

If Hollywood wants to make a bit more money on a film's opening day, they might want to shoot me an email about it that says, "It's about somebody fighting a cult." That's the surprise I got when I finally caught last year's Captain America: The First Avenger:

It's a movie about somebody fighting a cult! 

O.K., it's a stupid CGI-laden monstrosity, with explosions and a "love interest," about somebody fighting a cult. But still, it's a movie about somebody fighting a cult, and I should've been told:

 I'm NOT just a huge comic book fan.

For the record, the cult is Marvel Comics' mystical order known as Hydra, based on the Nazi SS, which brings up lots to think about - first and foremost, how the same beliefs and desires that fueled the SS also do so for today's NewAge, and how the public, both, here in the present and in Germany during the war, think that's a good thing. Word to the ahistorical, uninformed, and very-unwise:

  It's NOT a good thing at all,…. 

 

Update: NewAge Patient-Centered Care (Which Doctor?)

Wow - when a High Court in INDIA is saying to take action against quacks, and America's aren't, the gods (if there were such things) must be crazy. The best we can hope for, here, are class action lawsuits against the "snake oil" of homepathy - and damn it, we'd better be happy about it because (even with thousands of out of work lawyers supposedly looking for income) it's all we're going to get.

Over in England, Prince Charles's alternative medicine foundation was 'brought down by fraud,' and that's no laughing matter, while there's also a new comic book about "science, skepticism, evidence and woo" which has to be. I mean it just HAS to be, right?

I told you about the Australian college that rejected a chair based on Rudolf Steiner's ridiculous theories of "healing," but completely forgot to tell you about the Canadian dentist who got busted claiming he could cure cancer using "alternative" treatment techniques.

How he slipped through, I have no idea.

And everybody's heard about the Chinese human baby flesh pills, which didn't really faze me, because I've become so used to people making the most horrendous excuses for every gruesome human excess - like that $141.55 a bottle face cream made from the foreskin of baby boys that Oprah and Barbara Walters use - I'd already started wondering, a looong time ago, if grinding up babies into pills would even get a reaction from the rest of these ignorant, cold-hearted, self-deluded monsters.

 Now I know,... 

These Are The Words No Parent Wants To Hear

It's just one of those times when, whether the kid's gay or not, you know he's a faggot.

Hat Tip: Respectful Insolence

Fear: Anybody Getting The (Cliche'd) Point Yet?

This is a NewAge world, indeed. Nobody tell Meade about this one:

In these tough times of record unemployment, terror alerts, oil spills, mortgage foreclosures and partisan politics that have torn a rent down the middle of this country, Americans have good reason to be living in fear.

Now, it turns out super heroes aren't immune either.

Marvel Comics announced Tuesday that it is launching "Fear Itself," a seven-issue mega-event series starting in April, which taps into all the malaise gripping the company's readers. In the fictional universe of Spider-Man and Iron Man, however, that panic is stoked by the villainous God of Fear instead of television pundits and Internet-savvy fundamentalist clerics.

Yea, O.K., we're sooooo scared!

It Looks Stupid (But He's The Only God We Like)

Two lines we enjoyed:

"You are an old man and a fool!"

and

"Oh no, this is Earth, isn't it?"

Our feelings exactly.

This Is Why Americans Always Fall For NewAge

I don't think I could've found a better example of why NewAge didn't catch on, until the 70s, than the end of this video. I told you: we don't have a political problem, we have a cultural problem, and, as you can see, these folks don't know where they are or how they got here - except for fucking. They know fucking: I guarantee you, fucking, and slavery, they know. The words, mind you, the rest is a blur.

Looking at this, it's no wonder they're suckers for any NewAge idea under the sun, because, honestly, they've obviously never opened anything more substantial than someone else's legs, a Playboy, or a comic book. It's just sad, y'all.

Anyway, Happy 4th of July, you fucking morons - you're free.

Now go find someone to explain what that means,....

Hot Air

Experiencing A Musical Past Life Regression**

Alan Moore and Gorillaz (both known comic artists) had to stop on an Op before the scrilla got started:

"'It didn't work out, shall we say,' Moore told an audience at the University of Northampton (via io9). 'I met up with [Albarn and Hewitt], they were anxious that I should do something with them.' It seems Gorillaz first approached Moore in the hope the Watchmen creator would help with a 'superhero opera'. 'I said, "Well, I'm definitely not your man,"' Moore recalled. 'I don't want anything to do with those wretched creatures once again.'

But my friends in Fishbone (who also didn't make it) got a doc and some props for how we tried to take it:

"We were the most uncompromising people ever."

"Everyday Sunshine" (it's music to my ears) we were slaves to the waves that we made and hear:

"It was strangely beautiful and exciting to hear these noises for the first time from such a large and powerful source."

And I know Jack Dangers (where you don't know Jack) which is news you should use if you think you know Crack:

"The Meat Beat Manifesto album will have been finished for more than a year when it comes out in September. The lag is partly because Dangers is still in discussions with labels interested in releasing the physical product in different territories.

The JDs — who've shared the stage for live stints in mutual friend Mark Pistel's band, Pistel — started working on music for fun about seven years ago."

**I used to be in the music business with some of these guys. In time, I'll go back to it. But by then, if you haven't already donated to my blog, don't be expecting no backstage passes.

Tell The Psychic To Do It (She's Psychic)

Both Of Our Approaches Are Right - Except With Mine I'm Capable Of Crushing You Just Because