Monday, November 23, 2020
Sunday, November 22, 2020
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Friday, November 20, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 319 / Negation Aspiration vol. 251
"One of the strongest prescriptions about masculinity is that you have to show strength. Masculinity is performed publicly. And wearing a mask is a very public act. So once it got portrayed as a sign of weakness ...,” Glick says, trailing off. “Even men who don’t endorse that kind of extreme version of masculinity are still trained, from childhood on, to defend our manhood in some way.”
2020 Has Been Miserable. Is Extreme Masculinity to Blame?
Thursday, November 19, 2020
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 415
“Seven years have passed since The Otherworld was released to the public – almost seven hundred years have passed since the death at the stake of the last fully initiated ‘Cathar’ adept (Guilhelm Belibaste d. 1321) – and seven hundred and seventy-seven years have passed since the fall of the ‘heretic’ citadel of Montségur (March 16, 1244) – the wheel turns and deep in the heart of the Pyrenees an ancient prophecy falls due. After seven centuries the laurel will turn green again and the old ways return, just as Belibaste promised his persecutors all those years ago. The time foretold is at hand. The Old Ones stir and a new world beckons…”
Miracle or UFO Sighting? Richard Stanley Presents SANTIAGO LUTERO – THE LAST SECRET OF FATIMA
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Negation Aspiration vol. 250
For others, approaching confrontation can be anxiety-inducing. Avoiding confrontation, however, can lead to a buildup of resentment which could harm your relationship, whether it’s through snide remarks, a big blow-up later, or just slowly icing the other person out.
If you’re prone to bottling your feelings up because you’re super uncomfortable with confrontation, here’s what might be going on.
'Why Am I So Afraid to Stand Up for Myself?'
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 413
Directed and co-written by acclaimed horror master Álex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast, Witching & Bitching, The Last Circus), HBO/HBO Max’s new series “30 Coins” takes viewers into a world where nothing is as it seems, and nobody can be trusted.
[Trailer]
HBO’s
“30 Coins”
Brings
Enormous
Creatures to
Religious
Horror
Series!
Monday, November 16, 2020
Negation Aspiration vol. 249
The brightest infrared light from a short gamma-ray burst ever seen, the “bizarre glow” was spotted using the orbiting telescope in May 2020. It was 10 times brighter than it was thought possible.
NASA’s Hubble Spots ‘Bizarre Glow’ After An ‘Impossible’ Explosion In Space
Sunday, November 15, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 318
It is overall for Trump both a culmination and a continuation: a grand finale of sorts of the past five-plus years, in which he’s relied so much on so much unreality—and also a runway, a kind of topspin toward what’s to come once he leaves Washington, D.C., and presumably decamps to Mar-a-Lago to initiate a post-presidency that is all but assured to be unlike any other. The stakes are sky-high, and the collateral damage to America’s democracy could be lasting and profound, but Trump is doing what Trump has always done. He’s spinning a myth to serve his own interest. He’s doing what he believes he needs to do to put at least himself in the best possible position for the future after yet another failure.
“This isn’t about winning the presidency,” former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told me this week. “It’s his exit strategy.”
Trump’s Crazy and Confoundingly Successful Conspiracy Theory
His opponents think his evidence-free claims of voter fraud have no chance of winning. They already are.
Friday, November 13, 2020
#gorenoise vol. 42
Yorkshire Ripper serial killer Peter Sutcliffe dies
Peter Sutcliffe, who murdered at least 13 women, is understood to have refused treatment after contracting coronavirus in prison.
Awwwwwww Yeah vol. 184
East Netherlands regional police chief Oscar Dros appealed to Dutch citizens to "stop paedo-hunting; stop detaining; stop provoking - leave this to us."
Mr Dros told Algemeen Dagblad newspaper that since July some 250 incidents had been registered involving self-styled hunters, and there were probably many more. The practice has now been banned by police and public prosecutors.
People had been forced off the road, assaulted, threatened and publicly shamed on the internet, he said.
Facebook groups have sprung up across the country, with names like pedohuntnl, and some have attracted thousands of members.
One group member told public broadcaster NOS that "we're doing this to protect children".
The Dutch police chief said such vigilante behaviour "has no effect, because the evidence these citizens believe they have is often paper thin".
He knew of not one example that had led to a paedophile being convicted.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Negation Aspiration vol. 247
In August, things hit rock bottom. Philip’s focus had grown from coronavirus-specific conspiracies to the wider web of evil posited by QAnon. His YouTube recommendations were no longer about mobile phones and cars; they were for clips putting forward conspiracy theories and fabrications. YouTube has historically been one of the most permissive of the major social media platforms, with few policies against misinformation: instead, the site puts links to Wikipedia pages underneath contentious videos (and deletes only the most egregiously false ones). But even YouTube’s filters started getting in the way, and so he switched again, to the video host BitChute, where “Fall of the Cabal”, a notorious QAnon video primer, shares space with content creators recounting lurid stories of having seen an infamous – yet entirely fictional – video of Hillary Clinton eating a young child alive, chasing a supposed high that can be gained from drinking the blood of a terrified child.
In Philip’s eyes, Rachel was now an idiot, who believed mainstream media. “I became a ‘normie’ who needed to wake up and understand what was really going on,” she says. “He was unable to stick to one topic. If I said something about how we were struggling with social distancing at work, he would respond with a furious diatribe about Soros, Clinton, Bill Gates, 5G and vaccines that control and kill people.”
For Rachel, the final straw was when her husband claimed to have seen a video incriminating a member of the Hollywood elite: a clip, he said, of Tom Hanks “with a three-year-old girl”. For Rachel, who works with safeguarded children, the implication was obscene. If her husband really had seen such a clip, then no matter how it was produced – Photoshopped, edited together – it must have started as real child abuse imagery. That a cult ostensibly focused on saving children could somehow persuade her husband to engage in sharing such material disgusted her. She started packing her bags the next morning.
Facebook, QAnon and the world's slackening grip on reality
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 317
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 316
While the online bluster of neo-Nazis on Telegram can easily be written off as an example of troll culture, and does not necessarily augur real-world violence, several bonafide terror groups have had active accounts on the site. Both Atomwaffen Division and the Base—two neo-Nazi terror groups that are the subject of a continuing nationwide FBI counterterrorism operation netting dozens of arrests—were known to operate on the website, using it as a recruitment and propaganda tool to reach a wider audience.
Trump’s Continued Election Fight Fuelling Violent, Online Neo-Nazis
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Awwwwwww Yeah vol. 183 / NERRRRRRRRRRRRD! vol. 125
MEGAN THEE STALLION ANNOUNCES MILEENA IS COMING BACK TO MORTAL KOMBAT
Saturday, November 7, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 315
After four years of turning a blind eye to the president’s subversive rhetoric and manic behavior and relentless dishonesty, the ultimate test for the Republican Party was whether it would accommodate the president’s rebellion against this country’s democratic norms or denounce it.
The Republican Party has failed that test.
The Election That Broke the Republican Party
Friday, November 6, 2020
Thursday, November 5, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 313
Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they wanted more of it. His voters can no longer hide behind excuses about the corruption of Hillary Clinton or their willingness to take a chance on an unproven political novice. They cannot feign ignorance about how Trump would rule. They know, and they have embraced him.
Sadly, the voters who said in 2016 that they chose Trump because they thought he was “just like them” turned out to be right. Now, by picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved, and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong.
It’s clear now that far too many of Trump’s voters don’t care about policy, decency, or saving our democracy. They care about power. Although Trump appears to have received a small uptick in votes from Black men and Latinos, the overwhelming share of his supporters are white. The politics of cultural resentment, the obsessions of white anxiety, are so intense that his voters are determined not only to preserve minority rule but to leave a dangerous sociopath in the Oval Office. Even the candidacy of a man who was both a political centrist and a decent human being could not overcome this sullen commitment to authoritarianism.
American voters, including those who didn’t show up or who voted third-party in 2016, are now like drunks who have been bailed out of jail in the morning, full of relief as their lawyers explain that the police aren’t pressing charges. If Biden wins, we will have a second chance to keep our democracy intact. Some of us will have a moment of clarity. Most of us will just want to go home, throw up, change our clothes, and hope for the best.
But many millions, eyes dimming and livers failing, are still reaching for the bottle.
A Large Portion of the Electorate Chose the Sociopath
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 312 / Negation Aspiration vol. 245: Trump at 1460 (Year of the Contrarian)
Trump at 365 (Year of the Horde)
Trump at 730 (Year of the Titan)
He was a conservative all right, but invariably he gave the impression that he was a conservative because he was surrounded by liberals; that he had been a revolutionist if that had been required in order to be socially disruptive.― William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'
the following is an expert from the novel i am currently working on: BLUE YOLK. i'm not at liberty to divulge the "plot" or modus operandi behind it quite yet, so this section will have to be taken a bit out of context.... further so.
puritan backdoor. Aghori Sadhu instructional videos. knuckles slashed on pelvic mesh. feeling as if i've been reliving middle school for the last four years. looking on simmering alienation as longtime friends and members of your own family almost gleefully renew their most egregious and capricious impulses from those thoughtlessly vicious schoolyard days. impotent hubris. premature curmudgeons. zany smart-ass pranksters. bottom feeding contrarian maggots. a wearying deference to vindictive personal attacks. needlessly snarky and terminally incredulous. overwhelmed by greed, entitlement, cynicism, and bile. vulgar, chaotic appeals to the most deplorable of the low. pretending to care about others, but only as generalized abstractions.
the right and left... the alt and the hard... their modus operandi are in exact alignment; frustrate the exploited proletariat to the point of deeply pessimistic spiritual exhaustion, then scavenge the carrion fields for anyone willing to smother what remains of their pulverized identity for the sake of the most vaguely defined of "greater goods". rather than constructive approaches of even mournful reflection, they opt instead to take superior delight in their cut-throat nihilistic sadism being validated by the bowel-eroding awfulness of the world's events.
among the multitude of reasons that led us to this seemingly insurmountable impasse were asshole fake idiots who say things like "ThEy'Re AlL eQuALLy bAd!"; incoherent maladapted role-playing social rejects... either menstruating platitudes about children they'll never see being drone-striked in countries they can't name or hocking ream upon ream of splentic hyperbole about their theoretical darlings being snatched off the pristine anytown streets by parademonic globalist predators, who will pimp them out to obscenely wealthy shadow-pedophiles who perform sacrificial rites of devotion to an animal-faced false god while clad in baby blood splattered lizard-skin clown robes.
and checking social media? checking social media is like having unwillingly wandered into a town square lynch mob gauntlet and getting doused to the back of your eyeholes with a work week accumulation of blood/piss/shit/puke cocktails... the discourses overwhelmed by unbearably miserable full-body skin tags who can't stand to go a full thirteen hours without dropping some "hot takes"... you do know of "hot takes", correct? those intellect-negative rectum sheddings of maliciously terse insta-observation that serve no purpose beyond making others feel like they should've have been swallowed because they have the temerity to allow themselves the privileged luxury of actually liking something?
i know there will always be people like this; callous ambulance chasers, shameless tabloid ghouls, and sneering failed comedians... whose own cavernous lack of imaginative speculation will cause them to lean into self-nullifying codependency on impulsively negative commentary and resentfully jealous deconstructive critiques of those who can create and/or appreciate content that speaks to places within us that are just a scant few feet deeper than just narcissistically harp on a misguided feedback loop of rawboned grievances.
so i brumate... coiling sharp and tight into my private worlds... renewing my most egregious and capricious impulses from a youth spent marinating the lash in a steady flow of creamery venom.... bottling it up until i succumb to sepsis from a rupturing ulcer.
Monday, November 2, 2020
Negation Aspiration vol. 244
While other websites also host increasing amounts of violent and bigoted language, 4chan is an outlier even compared to other internet gathering places filled with similar ideologies. A VICE News analysis found that there was more hate speech on /pol/ than in the comments on one overtly Neo-Nazi site, the Daily Stormer. Mass murderers have posted manifestos on 4chan. White nationalists have used the site to coordinate protests.
When one Neo-Nazi group polled their supporters to discover how they came to the movement, /pol/ was tied for the most common gateway. Gab, another far right hotbed, contains about half the rate of hate speech as /pol/, and 4chan has 20 times more users. The only popular websites more toxic than 4chan are its much smaller offspring sites, like 8chan, now 8kun.
Over time, /pol/ has come to dominate the public perception of 4chan, overshadowing the quieter, less vile topic areas which make up much of the activity on the site. /pol/ is regularly the most active board on the site, but even so, it makes up a small portion of the total posts. Under RapeApe’s management, however, /pol/’s bigotry has metastasized.
The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet's Racist Engine
Sunday, November 1, 2020
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 411 / U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. (investigate)311
As I’m writing this, we’ve got an extremely consequential American presidential election coming up on Tuesday, and the tension (and the pandemic) have sort of put a damper on candy corn season. I go on walks to relax and my mind wanders through everything I’m angry about, everything I’m worried will happen. I feel like it’s very clear what the will of the people is, and even more clear that the people in power are planning some bullshit to thwart that will. And it’s not clear that they will fail, or what we can do if they succeed, and when I think about it my stomach tightens up like I have stage fright.
But I’ve had some success escaping into the horror movies I try to marathon at this time of year anyway. I have a review of another horror classic that’s all ready to go and worthy of posting on Halloween. But late on Wednesday night it hit me that THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 is the horror movie of this moment. Of course it is. We thought we got away. We thought everything could be okay again. We didn’t know it would get worse. Years later not only are they still getting away with it, they’re being more flagrant about it, making money off of it. Winning chili contests, living it up in fancy new digs. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre “seems to have no end,” according to the narration.
The Sawyers are Trump and friends. On the surface they’re very different – they obviously come from a different social class, they have a combat veteran in their family, and obviously Drayton comes across much nicer and less deranged in his public appearances as an award winning chili chef than Trump does as a president. But they’re living in massive opulence by the standards of their lifestyle, the house full of bones and animal parts having expanded to a massive underground complex. And when Lefty shows up to stop them, Drayton assumes it’s a business thing and tries to pay him off. Rich people shit.
Hooper and Carson were parodying Reaganism with some of this, so it overlaps with tried and true Republican themes of yore that mutated into the MAGA ideology. Drayton complains about property taxes and waxes nostalgic for the alleged good old days before technological changes at the rendering plant made the killing not as fun. He reveres Grandpa, a confused, drooling monster he says is “137 years old but as fast as Jesse James” even though his hands are too shaky to continue the family murder traditions. And since they live in the wreckage of Texas Battle Land, their house of horrors is literally built on tall tales of violent conflict.
Ironically it’s the straight horror stuff that more closely resembles Trumpism: the victimizing while complaining of victimization, the long history of flagrant violation of the innocent without ever being held accountable. The opening narration says that “It seems to have no end.” The police never got them because “No facts; no crime.”
Nothing is too foul, nothing is sacred. For God’s sake, their brother died 14 years ago and they don’t give a fuck, they just carry his corpse around and use it as a puppet. (insert Herman Cain joke)
Lefty is the one investigator trying to put a stop to this madness, with very little backing from the system. He’s not like the guys who went after Trump, trying to maintain a reputation as an institutionalist. He believes when they go chainsaw, we go chainsaw. He uses strategic leaks to the media and finds their literal skeletons in the very large metaphorical closet, but he’s powerless. It ruins and ends his life. It leaves him yelling “They can’t do this!” and “Bring it all down!” as he tries to do just that, sawing at the support beams. We feel you, Lefty.
Chop Top and Leatherface, of course, drive around in a huge pickup truck with an American flag covering the tailgate. If I may be so bold, I don’t believe they share my idea of American values. Chop Top is a veteran and now wears the tie-dyed clothes and peace symbols of the counterculture, claiming “music is my life” – I don’t know if it’s appropriation or trolling – but he doesn’t seem torn up about his war experience.
I’d say the sexual politics are of then, not now, but whatever you think of the things this movie puts Stretch through, the point is she gets through them. She fights, she bites, she literally climbs out of metaphorical Hell, from the dark catcombs to the sun-drenched surface, up to the top of that mountain, dumping Chop Top into the hole like garbage as the whole thing comes crashing down on the motherfuckers.
And she stands up there looking like a mad woman, waving the chainsaw around, mirroring Leatherface’s dance at the end of the first movie, but for her it’s a victory dance.
And that right there is the reason I had to watch this movie in this week of anticipation and hope and dread. Because some day, whether it’s in a couple days, or after a whole lot more fighting and running and climbing out of Hell, we’re gonna push past this era. We’re gonna survive, some of us. Hopefully most of us. And I imagine it’s gonna feel a whole lot like standing on top of a mountain, spinning around and stabbing the air with a chainsaw.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 310 / #gorenoise vol. 39
"Sometime in the middle of the night, someone left a DECAPITATED deer head in a white garbage bag on our lawn right near the sign,"
Bloody Deer Heads Propped Near Biden/Harris, Black Lives Matter Signs
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 410
stand-out viewing for the month of October (i did indulge in that "Horror Movie A Day" challenge, but i think only a few of these fit into that criteria)
THE DEAD ONES (2019, dir. Jeremy Kasten)
what is initially positioned to be another variation on a slasher theme ends up twisting into a comic-book colored amalgam of Gus Van Sant's Elephant and Jacob's Ladder.
perhaps Fulci's most "complete" film. not just another Spaghetti Western.
the only other franchise i can think of that is more exploratorily cracked while still maintaining a thread of connection to its opening chapter (however bare) is Don Coscarelli's Phantasm.
a scalding black comedy about status and death that pulls no punches in exposing the caustic indifference and punishing judgments of friends and family when your desperate struggles form a blockade around the lifeforce they need to drain from you to sustain their own positions of ascent.
aka Romancing the Ferox.
a must watch for any kind of movie geek who wishes to trace back the DNA of almost everything good about the last 50 years of cinema.
every toiletry dunce cap who thinks the coming-of-age redundancy of a glorified Tik-Tok video like Mignonnes is the pinnacle of brutality one can inflict upon a child should be forced to watch this near 3 hour trauma loop of numbing human degradation until the surfaces of the billiard balls occupying their cranial interiors peel into rinds of oozing blisters.
TO YOUR LAST DEATH (2019, dir. Jason Axinn)
VARIETY (1983, dir. Bette Gordon)
the outlaw motion comic you never knew you wanted.
a novelistic tour of Times Square sleaze from a refreshingly understanding female perspective.
visuals and narrative perpetually whipsaw between deconstruction and reconstruction with the unpredictable pacing of a child's dark imagination.
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